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1 


A Qualitative Analysis of the Process 
of Forgetting 


A DISSERTATION 

Submitted to the 

Faculty of Clark University, Worcester, Mass. 
In Partial Fulfilment 
of the 

Requirements for the 
Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 
and Accepted on the Recommendation of 
John Wallace Baird 


BY 

HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


Published as No. 130 of the Psychological Monographs 
Psychological Review Co., Princeton, N. J., 
and Lancaster, Pa. 




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A Qualitative Analysis of the Process 
of Forgetting 


A DISSERTATION 
Submitted to the 

Faculty of Clark University, Worcester, Mass. 
In Partial Fulfilment 

OF THE 

Requirements for the 
Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 
and Accepted on the Recommendation of 
John Wallace Baird 


BY 

HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


Published as No. 130 of the Psychological Monographs 
Psychological Review Co., Princeton, N. J., 
and Lancaster, Pa. 





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tu ia mi 


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PRINCETON 
l university, 
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CONTENTS 


I. Introduction 

II. Historical Review 

i . General Theories 

2 . Affective Memory—Experimental and Theoretical 

3 . Memory and Forgetting in General—Experimental 

III. Our Experiment 

A. Procedure 

i. Aims 

ii. Apparatus 

iii. Methods 

iv. Observers 

B. Results 

i. The Observers’ Methods of Learning the Ma¬ 

terial 

ii. The Observers’ Methods of Recalling the Ma¬ 

terial 

iii. The Effects of Forgetting and of the Lapse of 

Time on Mental Processes 

a. Visual Imagery 

b. Vocal-Motor-Auditory Imagery 

c. Kinaesthetic Processes 

d. Affection 

iv. Conscious Processes and Procedures Involved 

in Logical Memory 

a. Attitudes of Consciousness ( Bewnsstseins - 

lagen ) 

b. Subjective Interpolations 

c. Acceptance and Rejection 

d. Certainty and Uncertainty 

C. Summary 


IV. Bibliography 







































































































































































































































































































■ 






























































































































































































































































A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE PROCESS 
OF FORGETTING 


I. INTRODUCTION 

The investigation which is here reported attempts to determine 
what qualitative changes of memorial content take place with 
the lapse of time. Our procedure has consisted in making a series 
of cross-sections through an individual's remembrance of a given 
experience, and then in examining and comparing the contents 
of these various cross-sections with a view to discovering what 
changes are revealed. It was hoped by this means to supplement 
the investigations in which Ebbinghaus and others have deter¬ 
mined the quantitative relations of the process of forgetting. 

We have not attempted to discover how much forgetting 
has taken place at any stage of the process. It has been our 
endeavor to contribute to the solution of the general problem: 
What constitutes forgetting? What actually takes place when 
an individual forgets? What processes are inherent in forget¬ 
ting? How do these processes manifest themselves after various 
periods of time? In what manner are images affected by the 
lapse of time? What influence is exerted upon the process of 
recall by age of impression and degree of obliviscence ? Do new 
processes make their appearance in a progressive series of re¬ 
membrances of an experience to facilitate or to hinder recall? 


i 



II. HISTORICAL REVIEW 

The history of psychology is replete with references to 
memory, but we find few clear-cut conceptions of what is the 
essential nature of the process of forgetting. For this reason 
one finds it impossible to formulate a rigid classification of the 
different theories of forgetting. There have been and are to-day 
current popular notions of forgetting; most people recognize the 
fact that, as time elapses, events, or series of events, which at 
one time were easily recalled, return to consciousness more rarely 
and in paler colors, and can be reproduced only with increasing 
difficulty. 

i. General Theories 

One of the earliest views to be found in the literature holds 
that experiences are forgotten in consequence of the fact that 
our present perceptions tend to swamp and bury our images. 
The images are however not completely destroyed; they come 
to light again when, for any reason, the superimposed layers of 
impressions are removed. This conception may be traced to 
Aristotle (16) ; in modern times it has been advocated by Del- 
boeuf (49) and others. A second conception of forgetting, ad¬ 
vocated by Herbart (73) and others, holds that images persist 
but they suffer mutilation and obscuration. Old impressions are 
repressed and covered over by more recent experiences; and, 
with the lapse of time, the clearness and the intensity of the older 
images are impaired. Associations of images also undergo a 
similar progressive decadence; ideas tend to become resolved 
into their component elements, which in turn are re-combined 
or assimilated into new constellations. The complete decay of 
an image does not take place until after a very long time, after 
oft-repeated repressions. The repressed residua are not con¬ 
ceived of as pale images, but as “tendencies” or “dispositions” 
which determine the direction and the form of the assimilation 
taking place in the memorial contents. If these “tendencies” 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


3 


are supported and strengthened by means of association or by 
repetition, the “obscuring” or the “hindering” ideas themselves 
are submerged and the older, forgotten idea now emerges from 
obscurity into clear consciousness. A third conception of for¬ 
getting, that of Lotze (ioi and 102), maintains that the process 
of forgetting is a crumbling of the idea and the losing of some 
of its component elements; forgetting is not a process of general 
obscuration. In a somewhat similar fashion Renda (158) con¬ 
ceives that forgetting is not merely an accidental mental func¬ 
tion, but rather that forgetting is in nature essentially an active 
process of dissociation. Forgetting is a means by which con¬ 
sciousness rids itself of useless and excess lumber; and this 
active principle of dissociation bears a close similitude to the 
principle of natural selection in biology—forgetting is the essen- 
tal factor of mental evolution. 

Freud (61) maintains in his dream-psychology that the data 
of experience are neither forgotten nor lost, in the sense that 
they decay and fade away, but they are repressed into the so- 
called unconscious realm of mind and here they live an active 
and a dynamic life, coloring one’s views, one’s thoughts, and 
one’s ideals. The contents repressed into this unconscious dun¬ 
geon escape from it into the consciousness of dreams through 
means of disguises, and these disguises (mechanisms 1 of Con¬ 
densation, Displacement, Dramatisation and Secondary Elabora¬ 
tion) are employed to fool a hypothetical censor or guard who 
patrols the region separating the conscious from the unconscious. 
The avowed purpose of the censor is to repress sexual thoughts 
into the unconscious and to keep them out of the conscious. 
Whether this supposed censor is another idea, or another com¬ 
plex, or a brain cell, or a nervous mechanism, Freud does not 
tell us. In his Psycho-Pathology of Everyday Life (62), he 
still leans toward his sexual theory of forgetting,—he supposes 
that such forms of forgetting 2 as slips of pen (Verschreiben ), 
slips of tongue (Versprechen) , mislayings of objects ( Ver - 

1 Of these mechanisms we shall have something to say in Section III B iii a, 
pages 68 to 71 of this paper. 

2 See Frink (63) and Ranschburg (156). 


4 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


legen), misreadings (Verlesen ), slips of memory ( Vergessen von 
Namen, Daten, u.s.w.), and misapprehensions ( Vergreifen ), 
all these forms of forgetting, and others, are due to the unpleas¬ 
antness of the forgotten content or to- the unpleasantness of some 
content associated with the forgotten content and, on account of 
the unpleasantness, the forgotten content was once upon a time 
forced or repressed out of consciousness either directly, or in¬ 
directly by association; the act of repression caused the mislay¬ 
ing and the distortion of the memorial datum. In other words,- 
“a failure to remember is a not wanting to remember” something 
unpleasant. Repression is a biological mechanism of defense 
(similar to Renda’s active dissociation) and its function is to 
guard mind from unpleasant memories. 

But Ranschburg’s (156) rejoinder is that “the Freudian man¬ 
ner of explaining the phenomena of name-forgetting and of 
compensating-names (concealing memories) is, in view of all 
the work on the subject, superfluous throughout, when its entire 
lack of substantiation is taken into account.” Against the con¬ 
cept of forgetting as the effect of displeasure motives, Ransch- 
burg accounts for the various phenomena on the basis of two 
factors, namely, first, associative or reproductive inhibition due 
to similarity, that is illusion by means of images simultaneously 
aroused which have been strongly fused through practice; and 
second, the state of attention with which the original imprinting 
was accomplished (or was not thoroughly accomplished). 3 Full 
concentration of attention and mental freshness serve to imprint 
a datum in a true and faithful manner; but, if attention be dis¬ 
tracted, while the presentation or the imprinting is being done, 
by simultaneously effective stimuli, the recalls throughout the 
course of forgetting will be attended by perseverative images and 
with many forms of permutations and compensatory reproduc¬ 
tions, all in the nature of those forms of forgetting 4 which 

3 See Huguenin’s (77) conception of what he terms “paradoxical revival,” 
namely recalls which are most complete after a period of time has elapsed 
since learning, a phenomenon which he attributes to the influence of dis¬ 
tractions on memorizing; this view is also held by Cionci (38). See also 
our discussion on page 76 ff. 

4 See Bawden’s study of mental lapses (22) and Fletcher’s investigation 
of stuttering (59). 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


5 


Freud has attempted to explain on a hedonic principle. Ransch- 
burg draws evidence in support of his position from Muller (124) 
and Muller and Schumann, 5 who have extensively investigated a 
great many of the manifold problems and phenomena of memory, 
of remembering and of forgetting. 

As regards the role of repression in forgetting, Pear (138) 
has sought to differentiate between capricious or temporary for¬ 
getting and the more permanent fading out of the memorial con¬ 
tents; the former he explains on the basis of a principle of active 
repression, somewhat in the fashion of Freud. Wolf (138) 
refuses to accept Pear’s differentiation of the two kinds of for¬ 
getting, and, by means of the orthodox laws of retention and 
recall, he seeks to explain all forms of forgetting, and asserts 
that the resistance, or repression, theory is unsupported by 
facts. Mitchell (138) maintains that some forms of normal and 
abnormal forgetting, at least, are most easily explained by the 
hypothesis of repression, but that not all mental dissociation and 
not all forgetting can be accounted for on the assumption of re¬ 
pression and the attempts of the person to avoid pain or dis¬ 
pleasure. Loveday (138) states that most cases of normal for¬ 
getting are not to be explained by assuming that there was a will 
or desire to forget; the Freudian view implying that every con¬ 
tent to be recalled must be present all the time in the unconscious 
is an absurdity and had its origin in Freud’s associationism. 

Jones (80) maintains that all forgetting is partly due to re¬ 
pression. The unconscious residua of mind have been shown 
by psycho-analysis to be extremely great, and complexes of these 
residua exert an assimilative force of very great proportions. 
Due to the extent of the content and its assimilative activity, 
the associations in the unconscious are so manifold and so com¬ 
plex that one cannot at any time say that a given idea has never 
been associated with some unpleasant idea or group of ideas. 
And, as Renda has already stated, mental economy and mental 
efficiency demand that consciousness be relieved of its irrelevant 

5 Experimentelle Beitrage zur Untersuchung vom Geddchtnis. Leipzig, 
1894. Also from Muller and Pilzecker, Experimentelle Beitrage zur Lehre 
vom Geddchtnis. Leipzig, 1900. 


6 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


contents which might be in the way when it were necessary to 
concentrate upon matters of more vital import. This utilitarian 
repression would serve for purposes of explanation just as well 
as Freud’s hedonic mechanism of repression. All selective think¬ 
ing, at bottom, is a result of this extended principle of re¬ 
pression. 6 

Abramowski (i, 2, 3 and 4) conceives that each impression of 
a datum arouses a peculiar feeling; and, in time, the impressed 
datum of memory may be lost or forgotten, but this is never 
true of the feeling which was germane to that particular im¬ 
pression,—the feeling persists in its original form and is called a 
“generic feeling.” The fusion of this feeling with some later 
datum of impression will constitute a perception; if the two are 
separated, the feeling develops into an image which is associated 
with the impressed datum. This “generic feeling” is the very 
core of the recognition consciousness. A person’s being unable 
to recall just what a certain datum was, and yet is able to re¬ 
member what it was not, is due, according to Abramowski, to 
the fact that this “generic feeling” resists forgetting—it re¬ 
strains false data from entering and filling the lacunae of mem¬ 
ory; although its brother datum has in the course of time been 
lost, it itself is still active and resists the entrance of other data 
to supplant the lost member. This conception is almost wholly 
hypothetical, and we shall attempt to determine whether or not 
it will hold good in our experiment. 

In an attempt to explain memory in terms of the retention of 
traces of nerve stimulations, Pieron (150 and 151) and Robert¬ 
son (160) have both asserted that the fatigue or waste products 

6 Wells (203), in discussing emotional continuity and emotional trans¬ 
ference, cites many interesting cases which exemplify the fact that affects 
are drained from the original memory contents and loaded on to related and 
unrelated contents, the original datum, which in the first instance caused the 
affect, having been forgotten or submerged. He states, however (p. 126), 
that the “loaded” content, which one would suppose was equally subject to 
being suppressed itself if its affect is unpleasant, is not repressed or sub¬ 
merged. This important state of affairs argues against the repression theory 
of forgetting of Jones and Freud. Indeed, Wells states that unpleasantness 
is not a sufficient cause to account for many seeming phenomena of re¬ 
pression. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


7 


generated in the neurones by stimulation accumulate and act as 
auto-catalysors. Robertson goes even so far as to attempt an 
explanation of forgetting on the same principle. He conceives 
that forgetting is due to the fatigue products being slowly washed 
out of the neurones by fluids which circulate through the nerve 
elements. He compares the curve of forgetting, determined by 
Ebbinghaus, with two curves which he himself has obtained, 
one for the rate of extraction of protamine from dried salmon 
spermatozoa by a dilute solution of hydrochloric acid, and the 
other representing the rate of solution of dry casein by .0087 
“normal” potassium hydroxid; he finds a striking similarity be¬ 
tween the three curves. On the basis of this similarity he pos¬ 
tulates the hypothesis that the “memory trace” is, rapidly at first 
and more slowly in the course of time, washed out of the neu¬ 
rones by the circulating fluids; this washing out accounts for the 
dimming, the fading out, and the becoming discrete which are 
characteristic of images as they in the course of time decay. 

2. Affective Memory—Experimental and Theoretical 

As regards the question of the remembrance of pleasant and 
unpleasant experiences, Colegrove (42) on the basis of ques¬ 
tionnaire returns from whites, Indians, and negroes, in answer 
to the question, “Which do you remember better, pleasant or 
unpleasant experiences?” found the general result that more 
pleasant impressions are remembered than unpleasant ones. 
Kowalewski (86), presenting a similar question to 270 boys and 
girls, obtained results similar to those of Colgrove. Tait (179) 
presented to his observers words which he supposed would be 
attended by pleasantness, or unpleasantness, or indifference. 
From his numerical results, it was found that pleasant impres¬ 
sions are remembered better than unpleasant impressions, and 
both are remembered better than indifferent impressions. Gor¬ 
don (68) presented to her observers figures and squares of 
colors, which were to arouse pleasantness, unpleasantness, or in¬ 
difference; introspections were required as to whether or not 
the materials did actually arouse in the observers certain feel¬ 
ings. She found that there was no difference in the amounts 


8 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


of remembrances of pleasant, unpleasant and indifferent impres¬ 
sions. Gordon points out that the mere recalling of a greater 
number of former pleasant experiences does not necessarily mean 
that pleasantness contributes to retention or that unpleasant¬ 
ness has an obscuring effect. 

Discussing the fact that unsuccessful movements (being sup¬ 
posed to be disagreeable) tend to be sloughed off in the course 
of learning and that correct movements (being supposed to be 
agreeable) are retained, Hollingworth (74) maintains that mind 
“naturally” forgets the unpleasant and magnifies the pleasant in 
memory. In support of this view, he cites, as illustrations, the 
“canonization of saints, the apotheosis of strenuous historic 
characters, the obituaries of our friends, the reminiscences of 
childhood.” There is, he says, “a universal habit of forgetting 
the bad and exalting the good.” (P. 711) “In any process of 
learning, movements that miss the goal or result in dissatisfac¬ 
tion leave no trace in the nervous system and are forgotten.” 
(! ! ! ! )“But responses that result in success or that yield 
even a secondary satisfaction become, by virtue of that very en¬ 
suing glow of pleasure, re-enforced or fixed in the nervous sys¬ 
tem.” Henderson (71) agrees with Hollingworth that in the 
simplest kinds of learning, movements which lead to unpleasant¬ 
ness are eliminated or are banished, but he doubts that we for¬ 
get our unpleasant experiences in general. He asked ten ob¬ 
servers to recall incidents of their past experiences and to grade 
the remembered events into groups on the basis of their feeling 
tones. His results showed that the remembrances were agree¬ 
able (which does not mean that agreeable experiences were 
remembered always, but that the act of remembering was 
agreeable) but he does not accept an affirmative answer to the 
question of whether or not the pleasant experiences are better 
remembered than the unpleasant. Peters (141) required his ob¬ 
servers to recall, in reply to a stimulus-word, some of their 
past experiences and the observers were also to report the af¬ 
fective aspect of their original experiences as well as of their 
recall. Fifty-two per cent, of the experiences were reported as 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


9 


pleasant; recent events were less pleasant than earlier events. 7 
In the preponderance of pleasant or unpleasant experiences in 
memory there were individual differences among the reagents. 
There were individual differences as to the constancy of the af¬ 
fective process that attached itself to a certain event in its re¬ 
peated recalls from memory. In line with Hollingworth, or as 
the originator of the theory, Thorndike (181 and 183) main¬ 
tains that in the acquiring of vountary movements, the success¬ 
ful movement brings pleasantness which stamps in the neural 
connections necessary for that movement, and that the unsuc¬ 
cessful movement induces unpleasantness which stamps out in¬ 
correct or useless connections in the nervous system. Watson 
(198) mantains first, that not all successful acts are pleasant 
and not all unsuccessful acts are unpleasant; second, that acts 
other than the successful acts are fixed or are stamped in. He 
therefore holds that pleasure and displeasure have nothing to do 
with remembering. 

3. Memory and Forgetting in General—Experimental 

The assumption was current in the psychology of a few years 
ago that in acts of recognizing and judging the intervention of 
a memory image was a necessary and an essential process. Wolfe 
(209), working on the memory and recognition of tones after 
various short time intervals, and Lehmann (98), on the recog¬ 
nition and judging of the brightness of greys, assumed the in¬ 
terposition of a memory image in the recognitive consciousness. 
Starke (172), Merkel (112), Lehmann (99), and Tschisch (193) 
discovered that when two sounds objectively equal in intensity 
are given in succession, the second sound is judged to be the 
louder. This phenomenon they explain on the assumption that 
the memory image of the first sound holds over until the second 
sound is perceived but in the meanwhile has diminished in its 
intensity. In fact, the assumption of a memory image, with its 
qualitative and quantitative alterations, has been the basis of 
explanation of the phenomena of over-estimation and under- 

7 Cf. the discussion of the causes of affection on pages 89, 90, 91, and 92 of 
this paper. 


10 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


estimation in most of the earlier works on judgment. Still as¬ 
suming the intervention of memory images in acts of judging, 
Leuba (ioo), working on the classification of artificial stars of 
different intensities, found (p. 382 f.) that “the image of a recent 
sensation tends to recall by association, the united residual of all 
the past sensations of the same kind,” and since the past sensa¬ 
tions varied between high and low intensities, the obvious result 
occurs that there is “a natural tendency to shift the sensations 
held in memory towards the middle of the scale.” 8 Numerous 
other studies of judgment and recognition might here be cited; 
many of them assume the presence of a memory image in order 
to explain the phenomena of over- and under-estimation, and the 
approach toward mid-types which are to be found in judgments 
and in reproductions of sense impressions; such phenomena, the 
investigators claim, are traceable to the qualitative and quantita¬ 
tive alterations effected in memory images by the lapse of time. 

Kennedy (84) was the first writer to urge that special careful 
work of an analytical nature be undertaken in regard to the 
qualitative aspects of the memory consciousness with the lapse 
of time. Bentley (23) and Whipple (205) took up the cry. And 
Kuhlmann (89, 90 and 91) has laid great stress on the neces¬ 
sity of accurate and detailed analyses of the memory conscious¬ 
ness with regard to particular recalls and the alterations incident 
with the lapse of time. 

We shall now attempt to trace the investigations undertaken 
along lines similar to the suggestions made by Kennedy, Bentley, 
Whipple, and Kuhlmann. 

Philippe (145), 1897, appears to have been the first investi¬ 
gator to attack the problem of an analytic study of the image 
for its own sake. The problem he had in mind was two-fold : 
first, how do images arise and develop? and second, how do 
images transform themselves and disappear? Using as learning 
materials five common objects, such as a silver-plated screw, a 
trousers button, a velvet cravat bearing a cameo of the head of 
Caesar, a crochet stencil of copper, and a small Japanese mask, 

8 Cf. also studies by Wolfe (210) Baldwin and Shaw (20), Warren and 
Shaw (194), and Clark (41). 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


ii 


the experimenter placed an object in the right hand of an ob¬ 
server who had his eyes closed, and instructed the observer to 
visualize the object; when a definite visual image was reported, 
the experimenter removed the object and kept it out of view. 
The observer with open eyes now reproduced the object by 
drawing it as completely as he could. Then with closed eyes the 
observer went through the same procedure again with the same 
object, in an attempt to build up a complete and definite visual 
image. After the learning, at intervals of four or five days, one 
and two months, reproduced drawings were made in as accurate 
a fashion as the observer could recall the object. Six adults, re¬ 
porting in the course of seven months a total of one hundred and 
thirty images, and thirty school children, ages from five to eight 
years, took part in the experiment. From comparisons of the 
reproductions Philippe found that: i. The image tends to dis¬ 
appear in the manner of a confusion and an abstracting process, 
becoming vague and indefinite; it loses details to the point of 
being only a schema of the original object. 2. The image, on 
the other hand, tends to become more precise, taking another 
form and passing over into another set of images; there is a re¬ 
placement by other details which give the image its individuality 
and yet transform it into a concrete image of wholly another 
type. 3. The image gradually approaches in some degree a gen¬ 
eral or common type representing the group of which it is a 
member; this process of generalization is quite frequent; and this 
evolution toward a general type proceeds by transformations 
which are easy to trace. In general, the investigator believed 
that, through the law of economy, useless details of an image- 
complex of experience crumble away, in the process of forget¬ 
ting, in order to make way for the more useful elements which 
are themselves undergoing an assimilation into a new unity. In 
another study (146) Philippe made use of a questionnaire, quasi - 
introspective method, with ten laboratory students and professors 
of psychology habituated in some degree to observing their men¬ 
tal phenomena and a fifteen year old child. These instructions 
were given (p. 510) : “How many visual images of each of the 


12 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


following objects can you call to mind,—the statue of Venus de 
Milo, an ordinary pin, a cigarette, the type of capital ‘A’, and 
your mother’s face? Enumerate the images of each object in 
order of definiteness; describe each image carrying all of its de¬ 
tails and bearing an individual character; and separate clearly 
all other kinds of images. Indicate and describe finally the im¬ 
ages which at first you failed to mention.” The introspective 
replies are published; and Philippe, with much speculation, thought 
he had found three types of image, namely: i. the complete, de¬ 
tailed, definite image, individual and particular in character, in¬ 
separably fused with the localizations of its constituent parts, 
and with the place and the time of the original presentation; 
2. a transitional form of image, in which one part or another 
begins to stand out more focally than the others, somewhat rep¬ 
resentatively, and in which localization in time and place gradu¬ 
ally begin to be lost—the image becoming less distinct and less 
concise; and 3. the general and abstract image, having no 
particular elements in its constitution, being vague and schematic 
in character, rapid and transitory and evanescent in temporal 
course. From all of which this investigator concluded that 
images do not exist side by side, but they superpose them¬ 
selves one on the other and fuse one within the other, and thus 
approach generalization. Each image (of a given object) is af¬ 
fected by the preceding image (of the same object) and in turn 
influences the next succeeding image. And, of a given object, 
the images are less in number in proportion to the large number 
of previous representations fused into them; to the less degree 
in which an image contains within itself numerous previous rep¬ 
resentations, just so much more concrete is it. Abstract images 
are those images which have frequently been renewed by im¬ 
pressions under slightly or greatly dissimilar conditions; but if 
renewed always under the same conditions, the image becomes 
more and more concrete. Memory is immutable; but this is not 
true of images. Transformation and fusion of mental images 
are only expressions of the tendency of mind to generalize. 

Bentley (23) attempted to determine the exact place of the 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 13 

image in the memory consciousness and to discover the changes 
which the image undergoes in the course of time. He planned 
an experiment by which visual images of colors and brightnesses 
could be aroused. His materials consisted of colors and bright¬ 
nesses, which were presented by means of the Marbe adjustable 
color-mixer for a period of five seconds (series I, II); and after 
one, or five minutes, and sometimes a few days (series I; one, 
two, three, or five minutes in series II), a comparison stimulus 
was given. Just before the conclusion of the interval between 
stimuli the observer was asked whether he had a visual image of 
the first, or standard, stimulus, and, after the presentation of the 
comparison stimulus, the observers (who were five instructors and 
six students of psychology in Cornell University) reacted with 
one of the judgments “same,” “greater,” or “less,” the method 
being thaUof recall and comparison. The observers also reported 
as to the characteristics of their imagery, whether definite, clear 
and distinct, or vague and confused,—or no image whatever. The 
observers were instructed not to attend to the image of the stan¬ 
dard stimulus until so directed by signal from the experimenter 
at the close of the interval; the eyes of the observers were kept 
open, however. A third series had to do with the possible 
effects of visual stimulation during the interval between stimuli. 
In this series the observer noted the colors through a hooded 
arrangement, the colors being illuminated for two seconds by 
lamps, which in the interval were shut off from view by the clos¬ 
ing of shutters; during the interval (eleven intervals ranging 
from two to sixty seconds) the observer attempted to hold a 
visual image of the color and reported its disappearance and re¬ 
appearance. Three other variations were employed, namely: 
recall and selection of slightly different colors exposed by means 
of the Jastrow drop apparatus; the Burette method of present¬ 
ing a solution of a pigment which was noted and then imaged, 
and a weakening or a strengthening of the solution which the 
observer compared with his image of the previously presented 
color; and, lastly, the method of direct production, the observer 
attempting to reproduce a color which had been spread out on 


14 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


white paper in front of him. Bentley concludes, in part, as fol¬ 
lows, that: Grays and colors remembered in daylight tend 
to become lighter in the visual image. Grays presented 
in a dark compartment tend to become darker in the visual 
image during the interval of no illumination. The length 
of interval influences the accuracy and the lack of fidel¬ 
ity of visual memory; from two to six seconds no con¬ 
stant direction of change is noticeable, but from ten to sixty 
seconds there is a decrease of accuracy, and this continues to a 
high degree of infidelity after five minutes. But the memory 
image is more readily produced after five minutes than after one 
minute. And, where the memory after-image is isolated from 
the true memory image, the former is found to be quite constant 
in duration. 

Somewhat as Bentley had done in the field of vision, Whipple 
(205), by experiments on tonal and clang discrimination and 
judgment, undertook to trace introspectively the nature of the 
tonal memory image and the qualitative changes occurring in it 
with the lapse of time. Standard and comparison tones, each 
varying in pitch in certain cases, and separated by varying time- 
intervals (ten and forty seconds) were given by means of the 
Appunn tonometer and the Stern tonvariator; the method of 
discrete stimuli and the method of continuous change of com¬ 
parison-stimulus were employed. Six observers, students in the 
Psychological Laboratory at Cornell University, trained in intro¬ 
spection and of varying musical ability, took part in the experi¬ 
ments. Three observers, isolated from one another by screens, 
recorded on prepared sheets of paper their judgments of “equal.” 
“greater,” “less,” or “doubtful,”—their certainty and their de¬ 
tailed introspections as to the course of their images and their 
processes of judging. With the continuous change method, the 
observer, at the point where the comparison stimulus appeared 
to be subjectively equal to the standard stimulus, depressed a key 
which automatically ended the tone at that point. The image 
of the standard stimulus was at times actively held throughout 
the interval; and at other times distractions (by odors) were 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


15 


employed to effect the forgetting of the standard stimulus during 
the interval. The observers reacted in some cases without 
knowledge, and in other cases with knowledge, of the number 
of standard and comparison stimuli, and the direction of change 
(whether up or down) of the comparison stimulus. From the 
numerical and introspective results, the investigator found (205, 
b, p. 260) in regard to the nature and the course of the auditory 
tonal image, that: 1. “The auditory image proper, usually of 
the timbre of the stimulus and localized at the instrument, at¬ 
tains its maximal excellence about two seconds after the stimu¬ 
lus; thence, despite the active use of memorial aids, such as 
visualization, contraction of throat muscles, etc., it gradually 
wanes, suffering most in intensity, less in clearness, least in 
quality.” At forty seconds it has almost disappeared, and at 
sixty seconds it is entirely gone. 2. “The image apparently tends 
to flat, but this tendency is . . . consciously resisted by most 
observers, so that ... at thirty seconds or afterwards, it is more 
often sharp.” 3. The accessory constituents of the memory com¬ 
plex by no means disappear with the decay of the auditory 
memory image; sometimes they remain after the auditory image 
core has completely disappeared from consciousness. 4. Practice 
with a particular clang-color seems to make the image more in¬ 
tense, clearer, and of longer duration. 5. Active holding of the 
image soon results in a habit of imaging, and distractions are 
of little avail to prevent the insistence of the image during the 
interval; but individuals who are not given to the use of the 
auditory image are relatively more able to repress it when dis¬ 
tracted by odors. 

Kuhlmann has undertaken what is by far the most extensive 
and intensive study and has made the most careful analyses of the 
memory consciousness. He employed both meaningful and mean¬ 
ingless materials and worked particularly in the domains of 
vision and audition. It was he who, in the three articles (89, 
90, and 91) to which we referred on page 10 of this paper, 
emphasized repeatedly the need of such analyses. In his first 
experimental study (92), to solve the problems which he had 


i6 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


pointed out, Kuhlmann sought by the introspective method to 
determine the nature of the imagery in the recall of a given 
material, and to determine the nature of the memory errors and 
the causes which produce them. A group of meaningless visual 
forms, five to nine in a group, was presented only once to an 
observer for a period of ten minutes. Immediately, and after 
intervals ranging from two to ninety days, the observer recalled 
and drew the forms, introspecting in each case as to the nature 
of his imagery and the processes of recall and recognition. The 
forms which served as materials were of three classes,—altered 
familiar geometrical forms, continuous irregular curves, and 
several-part forms of simple and curved lines. Evidence as to 
the nature of the imagery was obtained from the introspections, 
—as to the nature of recall errors and their causes, indirectly 
from the objective data (reproduced drawings) which, however, 
were supplemented by the introspections. The observers were 
three fellows in psychology and one fellow in education in Clark 
University. These results were obtained: 9 

A. Learning 

The observer alternately noted the characteristics of the ma¬ 
terial and attempted to recall them,—this recall being a means 
of finding the difficult details to which special attention was then 
given. Then two devices were employed. I. associations 
(visual images of other forms, objects, etc.) were consciously 
sought for, in the noting, for a particular form as a whole and 
sometimes for parts of a whole form,—these served as aids to 
recall; and 2. verbal descriptions and characterizations of 
minute or difficult details were used as aids to the noting and 
also to correct the associations which were made. 

B. Recall 

1. The Manner of Appearance of the Imagery .—The visual 
imagery showed differences in its spontaneity and in the order of 
development of its parts, a. An indefinitely localized visual 
image of a form might flash up at once as a whole, clear, dis- 

9 The schematic form of classification is largely ours. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


17 


tinct, and without alterations, and might be immediately and 
completely accepted as correct, b. A certain interval, variously 
filled, might succeed the recall of a position before the form ap¬ 
peared. c. The visual image of a form might slowly and sequen¬ 
tially develop, its elements not coming simultaneously, d. This 
gradual development might occur in the appearance of several 
similar images one of which might be retained as most nearly 
correct, e. The image, instead of developing gradually, might 
stop at certain points, and after hesitation, proceed in an accept¬ 
ably correct direction, f. For easy forms, all the details might not 
be visualized before the drawing,—the visual image might come 
part by part or in other ways during the drawing, g. For diffi¬ 
cult forms, the observer might resort to recognition of the al¬ 
ready drawn details, having at the outset obtained them as best 
he could by visual imagery. 

2. The Use of Associations, a. Any one of the associations 
might be recalled first, to suggest the visual image of the material. 
b. The visual image might precede the appearance of the asso¬ 
ciation, in which case the association served to strengthen the 
visual image or to give the observer assurance, c. The associa¬ 
tion might leave the recognitive state unaffected, being a useless 
member of the recall-complex, d. Certain tendencies of eye or 
hand movements (infrequent) might synchronously appear with 
the visual form in the direction and order of the drawing and 
sometimes might precede the visual image, being regarded by 
the observer as real aids to recall. 

3. Factors Influencing the Character of the Recall and the 
Nature of the Imagery . a. The nature of the form: i. familiar 
forms were approached with characteristic attitudes of ease and 
certainty,—the images came readily, unwaveringly, and were im¬ 
mediately accepted,— associations were not needed and remained 
in the background of consciousness, but descriptive aids were 
used as to alterations which had been made in the original ma¬ 
terial; ii. forms presenting difficulty, such as the continuous ir¬ 
regular curves, were approached with an opposite attitude,—as¬ 
sociations were sought for but were hard to find,—much verbal 


i8 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


description was necessary for various details of the curve,—the 
images, which were general and schematic, might be easy and 
spontaneous, but the details were difficult to recall and required 
the use of verbal designations with frequent resort to the recog- 
nitive method,—or the visual image of the form as a whole 
might develop in sequential fashion, with now and then hesita¬ 
tion, resort to aids, and uncertainty at the difficult points of the 
details; iii. the several-part forms were easy as to the familiar 
parts included in them, but difficult as to the relations of those 
familiar parts, and the recalls took a character intermediate be¬ 
tween i. and ii. b. The influence of repetition and of elapsed 
time, due to which three stages in the recalls were clearly dis¬ 
tinguished : i. a stage of rapid dropping out of verbal charac¬ 
terizations as aids to recall,—a more frequent use of associations, 
—an average degree of certainty and an average spontaneity 
of visual imagery; ii. a stage in which the visual imagery shows 
the greatest spontaneity, coming up at once without the aid of 
associations or verbal cues,—the first image is frequently the 
correct one and, if not, correction is done in the visual image,—a 
strong degree of assurance accompanies the visual imagery,— 
oftener than not the subsidiary cues come after the visual imagery 
and do not affect recognition; iii. a stage of partial loss of 
memory,—there is a general inefficiency and lack of spontaneity 
of the imagery,—the image develops slowly, with much hesitancy 
and with periods in which no supplementary aids appear, and in 
wrong directions which are hardly recognized as wrong by the 
observer,—there is false description, and rivalry of different re¬ 
call factors is manifest,—finally resort is had to the recognitive 
drawing method and still the observer remains uncertain of or 
indifferent to the final result. 

4. The Relation of Errors to Ease and Certainty of Recall . 
The errors bore no regular relation to the ease or the certainty 
with which the observers reproduced the material, a. Most of the 
errors made in the first recall remained constant in the later re¬ 
calls; b. some errors retained their characters but increased 
in degree in a constant direction; and c. other errors changed 
in character, at least not only in degree in the same direction. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


19 


5. Sources of Error, a. Ambiguous verbal characterizations 
frequently led to erroneous recalls, b. An association with the 
form as a whole or a definite part of it tended to result in a 
drawing more like itself than like the original material. And 
c. a source of error which includes five factors: i. certain parts 
of a figure, resembling certain familiar geometrical forms, are 
drawn like the familiar figure although the observer denies the 
presence of an association; ii. lines not quite vertical or hori¬ 
zontal tend to become vertical or horizontal; iii. parts not quite 
parallel or perpendicular tend to become parallel or perpendicu¬ 
lar; iv. parts not quite equal tend to become equal; and v. there 
is a tendency to arrange the parts in symmetrical order. 

A second study (93) by Kuhlmann differed from the fore¬ 
going mostly in the fact that here pictures of meaningful objects 10 
were used; there were also minor changes of procedure,—the 
observers recalled but did not draw the pictures,—the picture 
was first recalled as a whole, and after introspection by the ob¬ 
server the picture was recalled detail by detail. Time intervals 
varying between a few days, ten days, and four weeks separated 
the recalls of the same material. The results which were ob¬ 
tained were similar to the findings in the former study. With 
the lapse of time the learning-order which had characterized the 
early recalls broke up gradually, due to the factors of differences 
in the spontaneity of the imagery of different pictures, the special 
prominence of certain associations, and a general image of the 
square-arrangement of the pictures of a group. As in the pre¬ 
vious experiment, the associations were shown to undergo pro¬ 
cesses of simplification in their imagery and to disappear entirely 
as time elapsed; when occurring previous to or synchronous with 
the visual image of the figures, the associations served as aids to 
recall and as factors in subjective assurance as to the correctness 
of the recall. A similar state of affairs occurred with the verbal 
designatory and descriptive imagery. There was a strong ten¬ 
dency to reconstruct details by rejecting the wrong imagery. In 
this process of accepting and rejecting four factors played their 
parts: 1. direct recognition; 2. spontaneity of the imagery; 

10 For a cut of the pictures, see (93) p. 393. 


20 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


3. the absence of rival imagery; and 4. inferences from what had 
already been recalled and from the observer’s knowledge of the 
objects represented by the pictures. These four factors were 
affected by the lapse of time, in that the spontaneity of correct 
imagery decreased, the intensity of direct recognition decreased, 
and rival imagery disappeared from old places of difficulty but 
at times appeared at new points of difficulty. There were two 
general classes of alterations through which the image content 
passed; the first, the class in which the observer recognized the 
changes as incorrect but they persisted and gained in frequency 
with the lapse of time; and the second, the class of memory 
illusions, where natural colors and motions were inserted in 
the pictures by the observer’s imagery. These illusions were 
due to the tendency of the imagery of the picture to change to the 
imagery of the object represented by the picture, which result is 
apparent from the following facts: the spontaneity of correct 
imagery declined as time went on; spontaneity, or the lack of it, 
was a criterion of correctness; immediate recognition decreased; 
the objects, and not the pictures of the objects, belonged to the 
observer’s everyday experience, their images being readier and 
more habitual in appearance; more interest and emotional color¬ 
ing is obtained from objects than from pictures of objects; and 
to the extent in which the picture truly represents the object, 
just to that degree is the imagery of the object already given. 

Kuhlmann’s third study (94) agreed in aim with his earlier 
studies, but here the auditory memory consciousness was investi¬ 
gated. The materials for learning consisted of verbal discourse 
and groups of sounds all presented by means of a graphophone, 
and each material was presented two, three, or four times at the 
first sitting (in two series they were repeated at later sittings) ; 
the matter was recalled immediately, or after one, four and ten 
weeks. Five tasks were required of the observer: 1. a semi¬ 
passive recall, in which merely the names of the various sounds 
were given and the order of the processes that entered into that 
recall; 2. introspection as to the manner in which the sounds 
were memorized; 3. a detailed recall of each sound, with obser¬ 
vations on the conscious processes and their functioning; 4. the 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


21 


observer measured the duration of each sound in his recall and 
recorded that judgment by a key and electro-magnet device, and 
introspected on the process of measurement; and 5. after the 
conclusion of a series with a group of sounds the observer 
measured the duration of each sound perceived. By this pro¬ 
cedure it was found that the words of the verbal discourse were 
recalled: 1. directly in auditory imagery; 2. associatively by 
visual imagery of the persons or the things suggested by the 
heard words; and 3. by inference from the visual or verbal con¬ 
text already recalled. The second was the most usual method 
of recall, especially at the beginning of records, at turning points 
of the discourse, and at points of difficulty in recalling the words. 
The auditory imagery varied in its completeness, in the degree 
in which the words carried the quality of the speaker’s voice, 
and in imagery of the speaker’s voice without the words. The 
lapse of time had its most noticeable effect in the second recall, 
i. e., in the recall after one week’s interval; the visual imagery 
which previously followed or occurred simultaneously with the 
auditory, now preceded it and became the means of recall; the 
visual imagery increased in amount and in its continuity even to 
the extent of alone representing a whole scene or event. With 
lapse of time the auditory imagery showed the following pro¬ 
gressive changes in quality: 1. the voice was imaged in its in¬ 
dividual quality; 2. it was imaged as merely a bass or a tenor; 
3. it was imaged in a characterless fashion; and 4. no definite 
complete auditory imagery preceded the formulation and the 
statement of the words of the recall. In semi-passive recalls the 
visual imagery showed the greatest spontaneity, next the audi¬ 
tory, the verbal names, and the motor processes. The visual 
imagery, considered from the manner in which it was employed, 
was of three kinds: 1. of the objects producing the sounds 
(most frequent),—used solely to initiate the auditory process 
and, if unduly attended to, hindered the recall of details; 2. of 
the objects going through the motions necessary for the making 
of the sounds,—employed to initiate the auditory process and 
to recall details; and 3. of arbitrary forms and colors which 
were signs for certain characteristics of the sounds. The verbal 


22 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


processes were names of things and were never descriptions of 
the sounds proper, hence they were of little value in the recall 
of details. The motor processes in initiating the recall of sounds, 
were by far the most prominent factors in the recall of details, 
especially where a sound was recalled minutely and vividly; they 
were the basis and a necessary means of measuring the duration 
of sounds from memory. The auditory imagery was extremely 
fragmentary, and its course was extremely irregular, at times 
leaving wide gaps to be filled in by means of motor and visual 
processes. 

Henderson’s study (70) of memory followed a line of in¬ 
quiry almost wholly different from that of Bentley, Whipple 
and Kuhlmann, but somewhat similar to the work of Philippe. 
With a view to showing the relation of memory for ideas to 
memory for words, and also to shed some light on the qualitative 
modifications of ideas that occur with the lapse of time, the in¬ 
vestigator had certain passages of connected prose learned in a 
given time and reproduced after definite intervals,—immediately, 
after two days, and after four weeks. The method was that of 
class-room experiment by written exercise, and the papers turned 
in were studied as to any and all alterations which characterized 
the later recalls. The observers, 212 in all, included 156 school- 
children, 21 undergraduates, 17 summer students and 18 gradu¬ 
ates in psychology in Columbia University. From the graduate 
students, who had before them a set of questions as to their 
mental processes, written introspections were obtained for only 
the third reproduction. The experimenter believed that he had 
established the following results relative to the nature of the 
recall process and to the qualitative changes occurring in the later 
reproductions. 

I. There are three steps in the process of recall, namely: 
1. a preliminary adjustment of attention similar to that employed 
in the learning, and accomplished by images of the learning situa¬ 
tion; 2. a sense 11 of the general meaning of the passage; and 

11 “Sense of the general meaning” is an extremely vague expression, and 
we are at a loss to know just what process of consciousness is denoted by 
such a characterization. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


23 


3. the unfolding of the details, obtained by waiting expectantly 
for certain cues to lead to results, or by reasoning from the cues 
to the details, and testing these by the criterion of familiarity in 
the context. 

II. There are three types of alterations through which the 
ideas pass in the course of time; A. a re-grouping of ideas or 
topics which are closely allied to one another, and the disappear¬ 
ance of contradictory or inconsistent ideas; B. a simplification 
which takes place in two manners; 1. by condensation, in which 
process (a) words are substituted for a long expression, the 
unimportant terms being dropped, and (b) similar ideas are 
placed into one expression; and 2. by modification, in which pro¬ 
cess there is a fusion of parts which resemble the same forbear, 
modified to suit a new context, or to fit the observer’s past ex¬ 
perience, or out-and-out omissions; and C. an introduction, in 
which process substitutions are made for similar ideas, and there 
is a spreading of similarities greater than in the original material, 
thus aiding the process of generalization. Re-grouping and re¬ 
simplification continue ad infinitum through another “giddy 
circle.” 12 

Gordon (67), working under the conception that there are two 
irreducible laws of memory, namely the law of association by 
contiguity which is a mechanical and external function, and the 
law of association by similarity, which is a subjective and in¬ 
ternal function,—sought to determine what influence is exerted 
by complexity of content (1) on memory and (2) on attention. 
In the experiment on memory, the simplest materials, nine non¬ 
sense syllables, shown one at a time through an opening in a 
screen, were presented for memorization, and the time required 

12 We make use of the terms “ad infinitum” and “giddy circle” in sum¬ 
marizing Henderson’s conclusions because we suspect, from a schema of 
results so systematic and logical as his, that the logical order and system 
in which his results are arranged were not wholly characteristic of the in¬ 
trospective facts which he accumulated in his investigation; from our own 
introspections and from the introspections of our observers we are led to 
believe that the disintegration and re-assimilation of images and ideas do 
not progress in nearly such an orderly and regular and logically systematic 
manner as Henderson reported. 


24 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


for learning them and for re-learning them after periods of delay 
was compared with the time necessary for the learning of nine 
other nonsense syllables which were complicated by variations in 
the order, location, and coloring of the syllables. The more com¬ 
plex series of syllables (the series containing different spatial 
features and colors) was more easily learned than the simpler 
series. 13 To measure the effect of complexity of content on at¬ 
tention, a card bearing a simple and a complex figure was handed 
the observer who was to note only one, but either one, of the 
figures on the card. And, to measure the holding of attention, 
the observer was told to let his attention alternate between the 
two figures, and to linger as long as he chose on either one; the 
operator registered on a smoked drum the number and the dura¬ 
tion of the observer’s eye-movements. 14 And, again to measure 
the holding of attention, the experimenter had the observer 
note illusion figures of the back of a book and a stair-case, press¬ 
ing a rubber bulb at each fluctuation of his attention. It was 
found that the more complex figure attracts and holds the at¬ 
tention. 

Finkenbinder (55) attempted to determine the mental con¬ 
tents which characterize remembrances of logically related data. 
Mathematical problems, often involving spatial relationships, 
and other problems, were solved by the observer; and after inter¬ 
vals varying from one month to five months, the observer re¬ 
called both the problem and the solution, and described his mental 
procedure and his mental contents. Visual images were found 

13 Gordon’s paper (67) is not clear as to whether or not she employed the 
same series of syllables in the two cases, only adding greater complexity to 
the same syllables and then using them for the second series; obviously, if 
the same syllables were re-presented with greater complexity of details the 
oldness of the syllables and familiarity with them and their partially learned 
characteristics would in no small degree account for their being more easily 
learned in series two than in series one. However, we must give the 
investigator the benefit of the doubt and believe that not the same syllables 
were re-presented for learning in series two. 

14 This was an unreliable procedure, to say the least, for, were the record¬ 
ing on the smoked drum accurately and mechanically done by means of 
electro-magnets or Marie tambours, still the personal-equation, the perception- 
and reaction-times of the experimenter, in his perceiving the eye-movements 
of his observer and in his then reacting himself to register a record on the 
drum, are sufficient causes of error and inaccuracy. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


25 


to constitute ninety per cent, of the total contents of the remem¬ 
brances of eighteen observers, although various kinds of imagery 
had attended the original understanding and solving of the 
problems. Problems having to do with turns of language, how¬ 
ever, tended to be recalled in auditory, vocal-motor and visual 
verbal imagery. The imagery first appearing in a recall was 
vague and schematic,—but later it became more definite and 
detailed;—its stability and non-conflicting character was an es¬ 
sential factor in subjective assurance of correctness. Various 
processes of solving which had earlier been employed were most 
frequently forgotten after a month or more. It is just to say 
of this study that its scope was too narrow; that it was confined 
almost wholly to a conception of images as static; and that it 
seemed to show a predilection in favor of visual imagery. 15 

Slaughter (166) sought to ascertain the exact behavior of the 
image in a certain interval of time. The observer was allowed to 
look at a drawn figure on a card for a few seconds before a 
“ready” signal was given (this signal ushered in a period of 
time during which it was hoped the after-image would be lost), 
and after five seconds the experimenter signalled “now” for the 
observer to note his image of the diagram for a period of ten 
seconds, at the close of which another “now” concluded the ob¬ 
servation. Then an introspection as to the behavior of the image 
was reported by the observer. The movements which the in¬ 
vestigator wished his observers to image were represented by 
drawings on cards. Auditory, tactual, gustatory and olfactory 
images were to be initiated by the experimenter’s giving of a 
call-word. It was believed that the following results were estab- 

15 It goes without saying, and there is ample evidence to show that, all 
else being equal, visual imagery is the best mode of recalling spatial rela¬ 
tions, because visual imagery offers a simultaneous representation which is 
needed in dealing with spatial problems. But it is just the “all else not 
being equal” that throws difficulty in the way of this study,—it is just the 
logical side of memory which this study seems to neglect. In a word, the 
investigator took slight account of the process characters of the mental con¬ 
tents which he undertook to investigate; he missed almost entirely those 
subtle and intricate and fleeting variations in focality, in intensity, and in 
spatial and temporal duration which seem to be extremely important factors 
in all higher-thought processes. 


26 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


lished: i. the factors which hold visual images in clear con¬ 
sciousness are their own internal organization together with 
motor elements; 2. auditory images appear only in associative 
complexes, where motor elements are prominent; and 3. other 
images (tactual, gustatory, etc.) also require associative com¬ 
plexes, and even here the existence of such images is doubtful. 
It must be said of Slaughter’s study that it is of doubtful valid¬ 
ity, 16 for the data were insufficient in amount and in quality, the 
method was poor, the conditions of experimentation were dis¬ 
similar, the introspections in some cases were ignored, and very 
little was said of the behavior, or the process aspects, of the im¬ 
ages studied. 

Meakin (no) attempted an investigation of the inhibitory 
force of one image on another; the study, however, amounted 
to little more than furnishing indications of the fact that size, 
complexity, form, and color of figures are incentives to revival, 17 
images of the more complex figure, of the figure with more ir¬ 
regular lines, of the moderately large figure, and of the black 
(as against the grey) figure, are all prone to recur and to persist 
in consciousness, Moore (122) had his observers note their 
memory images of simple figures, to suppress images of certain 
figures, and to move and alter (in color, etc.,) images of certain 
other figures; the time required for these operations was 
recorded. In the suppression of images, and in the moving of 
images (to other localizations), eye-movements played an im¬ 
portant role. Under passive observation images suffered a very 
noticeable fading in color and a loss of definite outline. In the 
early recalls, the objects were imaged in the places of the original 
presentation. Vocal-motor and auditory imagery furnished im¬ 
portant initiatory cues for the arousal of images of color. Mur¬ 
ray (129), in a more carefully planned and more systematic in¬ 
vestigation than those of Meakin and Moore, studied the spon¬ 
taneous recurrence and persistence of images of different figures. 
In general, she found that neither the attributes of quality and 
spatial localization of a stimulus, nor ocular movements incident 

16 Lay (97) has severely criticized the work. 

17 Bentley (24) reviews and criticizes Meakin’s study. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


27 


to sense impressions of that stimulus, constitute the important 
factors which determine visual recall. On the contrary, re-ap¬ 
pearance and persistence, and distinctness and accuracy, of a 
recall-image are conditioned by the relation of the image to cer¬ 
tain central (subjective or apperceptive) conditions. 18 

Experimental studies by Perky (139), Martin (106), and 
Ogden (133), have attempted (and, in our opinion, without 
avail) to determine what are the characteristic differences be¬ 
tween memory images and images of imagination. Each of 
these investigators has, on the basis of introspective data, sought 
to point out certain characteristic and invariable factors which 
are thought to be inherent in the processes in question. The most 
patent fault of all of these studies lies in the fact that the in¬ 
vestigators started with the assumption that there are pure im¬ 
ages of memory and pure images of imagination, the one being 
distinct from the other; 19 and on that basis the investigators 
proceeded to institute a comparison between such images as were 
supposed to be of the two kinds mentioned, namely memory and 
imagination. Furthermore, images of memory and of imagina¬ 
tion were thought to be simple in function; that images could 
possibly undergo the greatest complexity in their manifestations 
and in their process characters received only slight consideration 
at the hands of these investigators. Perky employed a rather 
questionable method. Lantern pictures of certain objects were 
presented in perceptual terms to the observer, who was supposed 
to be totally unaware that the pictures were being perceptually 
presented,—he was to “image” a certain object in the localiza¬ 
tion of the lantern picture. The purpose of this procedure was 
to determine just what are the characteristic marks of an image 
which serve to differentiate it from perception. Martin’s method 
also was not above reproach. She required of not only her best 
trained introspectors but also of naive subjects that they call up 

18 In our own experimental results we shall attempt to throw light upon 
these “central conditions,” or at least upon one central factor which plays 
an important part in the phenomena of recurrence and persistence. 

19 See Clark (41, p. 488 ff.) whose investigation is reviewed in this paper 
(P. 28 f.). 


28 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


and manipulate two simultaneous visual images; they were to 
project the images to certain localities, and to alter their images 
in certain other ways. This was a spurious bit of experimenting, 
for the most skilled and most practiced introspectors find it an 
extremely difficult task to report on the variations in quality, 
intensity, focality, and duration of even a single visual image. 
Moreover, one can see in some of the images evoked by Martin’s 
subjects little more in the nature of imagination than the mere 
fact that the experimenter asked her observers to “imagine” 
such and such an object in such and such a place. Ogden failed 
to throw much light on the problem. Unable to find in con¬ 
sciousness criteria for differentiating memory from imagination, 
he goes outside of consciousness and makes a very ready resort 
to the use of the supposed imageless contents and of the sup¬ 
posed thought-element. In our own experimental results we 
hope to show at least something as to really how very complex 
images of memory and imagination are, and, in this way, to 
furnish indications relating to the problem of the differences be¬ 
tween memory images and images of imagination. 

Our own investigation, reported in the pages of this paper, 
was begun at Clark University in the autumn of 1914 and was 
continued until June, 1916. In November, 1916, just when our 
report was being re-written and prepared for publication, there 
appeared a study somewhat similar to ours, having to do with the 
visual image and attention, by Clark (41). This investigator 
attempted (1) to classify images as being familiar, unfamiliar, 
and general; (2) to ascertain the relation between kind and 
function of image with ocular movement; and (3) to discover as 
many functions of the image as possible, such functions for in¬ 
stance as particularity, familiarity, location and position of 
image, imaginal background, size of image, stability, clearness 
relations, color, affection, bodily reference, temporal localization, 
and various contexts of the image. Both introspective and ob¬ 
jective methods of experimentation, some of them extremely 
ingenious, were employed. The investigator found that her 
familiar-images agreed in character with the memory-images of 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


29 


both Perky and Ogden, and with the individual images of Koff- 
ka (85) ; that her unfamiliar-images were similar to the imagina¬ 
tion-images of Ogden, and the individual-images of Koffka; and 
that her general- or generic-images were similar to the imagina¬ 
tion-images of Perky, and to the general-images of Koffka. 
Clark’s general- or generic-images, instead of being similar to 
Perky’s images of imagination in being “substantial” and “com¬ 
plete,” were schematic and vague. Martin and Ogden were 
confirmed in the discovery that no relation existed between kind 
of image and the presence or absence of color. Both Clark and 
Ogden failed to substantiate the existence of Perky’s memorial 
“mood of recognition” or her imaginative “mood of surprise.” 
Clark’s study brought to light no characteristic relation between 
kind of image and its stability as regards memory and imagina¬ 
tion. “The conditions of ocular movement with imagery seem 
to be general conditions,—not the conditions which distinguish 
two imaginal functions, memorial and imaginative. Indeed, it is 
doubtful whether it is feasible and proper to attempt to oppose 
these two functions at the level of the total image. Our own 
analyses” . . . “suggest a very large number of functional 

gradations for the simpler imaginal complexes;—gradations of 
specifying, of individualizing, of generalizing, of symbolizing 
(see p. 44 ff., this thesis), and of references to the observer, 
to objects, to times, to places, and to contexts.” (P. 490). 


III. OUR EXPERIMENT 
A. Procedure 
i. Aims 

This study concerns itself with an experimental investigation 
of the qualitative changes which images undergo during the 
lapse of time,—and also with alterations and mutilations occur¬ 
ring in retained and recalled memorial contents after various 
time intervals. A piece of meaningful material was presented 
for learning, and was recalled immediately after the learning; 
from then on delayed recalls were had after various intervals of 
time, ranging from thirty minutes to over three hundred days. 
From introspective cross-sections of the processes of conscious¬ 
ness manifested in the procedures of learning and recalling, we 
have aimed to work out the telescopic and transitional forms 
induced by forgetting and by the lapse of time. We have also 
sought to compare the recalled contents, that is the remembered 
materials, to ascertain what effects were produced in them in the 
course of forgetting. The aim has been an intensive rather than 
an extensive attack of the problem,—our main avenue of ap¬ 
proach to this problem being by the method of careful, detailed 
introspective analyses of the memory consciousness; and as a 
subsidiary device of study we have instituted a comparison be¬ 
tween the reproductions after the various intervals of delay, in 
an attempt to discover just what are the effects of forgetting 
manifested in the objective recalled contents themselves. 

ii. Apparatus 

Seven series of learning materials were employed. Series I 
and Cl consisted of pictures, cut from newspapers, representing 
football players and boxers in certain characteristic postures. 
These pictures were mounted on grey, black, or white cards, of 
varying sizes from 40 cm. x 35 cm. to 26 cm. x 18 cm. The 
pictures themselves ranged in size from 37 cm. x 25 cm. to 20 cm. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


3i 


x 12 cm. Series II consisted of cards bearing geometrical 
diagrams, nonsense drawings, and various colors arranged 
in different forms; the sizes of the different cards varied 
from 28 cm. square to 38 cm. x 28 cm. Series III con¬ 
sisted of comic newspaper pictures (“Pa Van Loon” and 
“Bringing-Up Father”), the former colored and the latter un¬ 
colored; these were mounted on black and white cards. Series 
IV consisted of selections of philosophical prose, written by 
hand or typewritten on cards and library slips; details of color, 
capital letters, hyphens and underlinings were inserted as parts 
of the material. Series V consisted of an artist’s undraped 
wooden mannikin, 91 cm. in height, presented in certain well- 
known postures. 1 Series B consisted of a clay object, 2 shaped 
somewhat like an outer ear, 8 cm. on its longer axis and 5 cm. 
on its shorter axis, and bearing on its convex surface a ridge in 
which two metal hooks or eyes were inserted, and a piece of 
burlap glued near the ridge. Series I, III, and V were designed 
for the purpose of studying all possible forms of kinaesthesis or 
empathic experiences, and any possible trace of affection which 
might have attended the original presentation of the material. 
Series Cl consisted of athletic pictures (football players and box¬ 
ers) as nearly similar as we could find them; materials C I 7, 
Cl 6, C I 5, C I 4, and C I 3 were recalled immediately and 
after 7, 14, 21, 28 and 35 days respectively. The effort was 
made to avoid the possibly evil effects of repeated recalls of the 
same material; hence, the time intervals of 7, 14, 21, 28, and 35 
days were employed with the different but similar learning ma¬ 
terials of Series CL 

All the materials, except Series B, were presented to the ob¬ 
server in visual fashion; Series B was presented in a tactual and 
kinaesthetic manner,—the observer was blindfolded and was al¬ 
lowed to handle the object. The cards of Series I, II, III and Cl 
were fastened by means of thumbtacks to an upright screen built 

iThe postures of “An Orator," with right hand extended in gesture, 
and of a “Gymnast," balancing on one leg and lowering his body to the 
floor. 

2 Designed by Dr. S. C. Fisher in her experiment on Abstraction (57). 


32 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


on to an ordinary small table; the surface of this upright screen 
and the top of the table were uniformly covered with green 
cardboard. The presented card was on a line horizontal with 
the observer’s eyes at a distance of 61 cm. as he sat before the 
table. A falling shutter screened the card from view; this shutter 
was 40 cm. square, and covered the card until the experimenter 
made the presentation by raising the shutter. The experimenter 
stood out of the observer’s field of vision at his left. The ma¬ 
terials of Series IV were handed the observer, or they were 
tacked on the top of the table just in front of him,—in the latter 
case, a card screened the material from view until the experi¬ 
menter gave the “ready” signal and displayed the material for 
presentation. The artist’s mannikin (of Series V) was presented 
on the top of an ordinary table against a white background, and 
was enclosed by curtains operated by means of pulleys and ropes 
from the observer’s rear. The observer sat facing the mannikin 
at a distance of 214 cm. Most of the materials 3 bore in printed 
form captions by means of which they were recalled after various 
periods of delay. In Series II 1, 3, IV 2 the captions (such as 
“lettered squares,” “color circle,” and “philosophical prose”) 
were presented to the observer in auditory fashion. The cap¬ 
tions, in the majority of cases, were roughly characteristic of 
the presented materials, although it was our purpose not to 
make the caption exactly representative of the material with 
which it was associated; there were two reasons for this pro¬ 
cedure,—first, in order that the caption would not too easily of 
itself give a clue to the details of the material to be recalled; and, 
second, in order to ascertain whether or not the observer would 
remember his various remarks and judgments concerning the 
relation existing between the caption and its accompanying ma¬ 
terial. 


iii. Methods 

The experimenter before the learning experiment began gave 
the following instructions: “To-day you will be presented some 
material to be learned,—use any learning procedure you like or 
3 The exceptions were Series II 1, 3, and IV 2. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 3 3 

find easiest of employment; thirty seconds will be allowed for 
the learning, at the conclusion of which time the experimenter 
will end the exposure; 4 then you will recall 5 and then give as 
complete and as detailed an introspective description as possible 
of the procedure which you employed in learning and in recall.” 
The observer’s time of recall was limited only by his statement 
that his recall was completed. 

The observer made frequent delayed recalls after the original 
learning; these recalls came at intervals of varying lengths after 
the learning, ranging from thirty minutes to over three hundred 
days. The time intervals are given in Table I, page 34, and Table 
II, page 36, gives the number of recalls, both immediate and 
delayed, of each material and for each observer. 

The materials were presented only once to an observer for 
learning, and he never again saw them or came directly in con¬ 
tact with them in the course of the investigation. 6 Every ma¬ 
terial was recalled immediately after the completion of the thirty 
seconds’ learning. Before the delayed recall experiment began, 
the experimenter gave the following instructions: “To-day the 
experimenter will ask you to recall a certain material; will you 
recall that material to yourself silently and then express 7 that 
recall and then introspect on the processes of consciousness en¬ 
tering into that recall?” The experimenter gave a “ready” sig¬ 
nal and then called out to the observer the caption of a certain 
material. 

iv. Observers 

Our ten observers were all highly trained in introspection; 
they were individuals of considerable introspective experience 
varying from one year’s to five years’ practice. The ten ob¬ 
servers, all instructors or graduate students of Experimental 

4 By dropping the shutter, or removing the material, or closing the cur¬ 
tains, as the case might have been. 

5 Orally in Series III, IV, B, and Cl; orally and by drawing in Series I and 
V; and by drawing in Series II. 

6 Except in the case of the artist’s mannikin, which was re-adjusted to other 
postures for the different presentations to an observer. 

7 Orally, or orally and by drawing, or by drawing alone, as the case might 
have been,—see footnote 5, above. 


34 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


TABLE I 

This table shows the various temporal intervals, expressed in minutes (') 
and in days, which elapsed between presentation and recall in the various 
experiments. All materials were recalled immediately after presentation; but 


the immediate recalls are 


Observers 

Materials 

B 

F 

(series) 



I 1 

7 

30 ' 


28 

7 


82 

21 


no 

35 



70 



419 

I 2 


7 



14 



35 



258 


II 1 

33 

49 


47 

70 


77 

98 


84 

314 

II 2 


12 



21 



54 



89 

II 3 

7 

30 ' 


21 

7 


84 

21 


112 

28 



56 


\ 

323 



356 

III 1 

7 

21 


14 

56 


19 

70 


26 

77 


56 

84 


131 

323 

III 2 

16 

9 


42 

14 


72 

28 


98 

35 



77 



119 


included in this table. 


Fg 

Fs 

H 

0 

21 

30' 

17 

30' 

49 

7 

32 

7 

70 

76 

100 

94 

79 

no 

21 

70 

425 


13 

14 

49 

hi 


4 21 

11 49 

18 80 

108 
320 

13 

14 
49 

hi 

7 7 7 4 

21 5 2 21 11 

42 73 n8 42 

49 208 67 

95 

381 


n 

n 

21 

24 

21 

28 

73 

63 

105 

35 

90 

94 

no 

140 


174 

334 


4 

25 

28 

255 


R 

5 

T 

W 

21 

30 ' 

30' 

30 ' 

59 

14 

23 

7 

112 

84 

42 

70 


49 

305 


11 

18 

21 

38 

46 

105 


10 

21 

49 

73 

14 14 30' 


189 


14 

12 

56 

19 

73 

60 


285 


4 

7 

21 

49 

67 

105 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 35 


TABLE I—Continued 


Observers 

B 

F 

Fg 

Fs 

H 

0 

R 

5 

T 

W 

Materials 











(series) 











IV i 

2 

30' 

3 

14 


30' 

11 

7 

4 

30' 


30 

7 

10 

21 


4 

14 


7 

7 


93 

21 

80 

107 


7 

25 


11 

70 



63 

115 



14 

63 


14 




98 




74 



18 




407 




422 



63 











137 


IV 2 


5 




1 



3 




7 




14 



13 




19 




28 



31 




26 




29 



59 




28 




77 







96 




126 





IV 3 


42 


3 

20 

24 







328 



69 

42 










167 

329 










177 






V i 

7 

30' 

35 

7 


14 

4 

7 

3 

4 


37 

7 

49 

56 


21 

7 


7 



63 

35 

70 

73 


56 

18 


28 



84 

42 

86 



172 

46 


3i 




49 




394 



35 




372 







126 


V 2 


2 


3 

16 

3 



3 




21 


7 

34 

7 



7 




28 


10 

79 

21 



28 




63 



93 

38 



3i 




84 




45 



35 








273 



126 


B i 


7 




28 







35 




69 







56 




91 





Cl 3 

35 

35 




35 



35 




78 




85 





Cl 4 

28 

28 




28 



28 




77 




84 





Cl 5 

21 

21 




21 



21 




72 




78 





Cl 6 

14 

14 




14 



14 




63 




70 





Cl 7 

7 

7 




7 



7 




65 




7i 






36 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


TABLE II 

This table shows the total number of learnings, the number of recalls of 
each material, the number of introspections by every observer, and the num¬ 
ber and the percentages of introspections quoted. 


Observers 

Materials 

B 

F 

Fg 

Fs 

H 

0 

R 

5 

r 

IV 

Total 

(series) 












I 1 

5 

7 

6 

4 

5 

6 

4 

4 

6 

4 

5 i 

2 


5 




6 



7 


18 

11 1 

5 

5 


4 


6 





20 

2 


5 




5 



5 


15 

3 

5 

8 

5 

4 

5 

7 

4 

3 

5 


46 

III 1 

7 

7 

6 

4 

5 

5 

4 


5 


43 

2 

5 

7 




5 



7 


24 

IV 1 

4 

7 

5 

4 


7 

5 

2 

8 

3 

45 

2 


7 




7 



5 


19 

3 


3 


2 

5 

4 





14 

V 1 

5 

7 

5 

4 


6 

5 

2 

7 

2 

43 

2 


6 


4 

5 

7 



5 


27 

B 1 


4 




4 





8 

Cl 3 

2 

3 




3 



2 


10 

4 

2 

3 




3 



2 


10 

5 

2 

3 




3 



2 


10 

6 

2 

3 




3 



2 


10 

7 

2 

3 




3 



2 


10 

Total Number of 
Recalls 

Total Number of 

46 

93 

2 7 

30 

25 

90 

22 

11 

70 

9 

423 

Learnings 

Total Number of In¬ 

12 

18 

5 

8 

5 

18 

5 

4 

15 

3 

93 

trospections Taken 
Number of Intro¬ 

58 

hi 

32 

38 

30 

108 

27 

15 

85 

12 

5 i 6 

spections Quoted 
Per Cent, of Intro¬ 

14 

12 

14 

12 

5 

11 

8 

10 

13 

6 

105 

spections Quoted 

24.1 

10.8 

4*. 

OJ 

bo 

31.6 

16.7 

10.2 

29.6 

66.7 

15.3 

50.0 

20.4 


Psychology, were the following: Samuel W. Fernberger, Ph.D. 
(F.); Gustav A. Feingold, Ph.D. (Fg.) ; S. Carolyn Fisher, 
Ph.D. ( Fs .); Ethel Bowman, A.M. ( B .); Baiten Hori, A.M. 
(H.) ; Francis J. O’Brien, A.M. (O.) ; Bruce B. Robinson, A.B. 
(R.) ; George S. Snoddy, A.M. (S.) ; Robert B. Teachout, A.M. 
(T.); and Raymond H. Wheeler, A.M. (IV). It is a pleasure 
to express our gratitude to Professor J. W. Baird , 8 who sug- 

8 This manuscript, in its original, rough draft, was approved by Professor 
Baird during the spring semester of 191*6; the revised and amended and 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


37 


gested this investigation and who has generously supervised it, 
and to our observers who have furnished us with introspective 
data extremely difficult to obtain and upon which our main re¬ 
sults are based. 


B. Results 

i. The Observers’ Methods of Learning the Material 

Before considering the nature of the imagery in the recalls and 
the qualitative aspects of the imagery as affected by time and by 
forgetting, we must first consider the processes of conscious¬ 
ness which attended the original presentation and the learning 
of the material. This will throw light upon the observer’s type 
of learning and upon his ideational type as well, and upon the 
nature of the processes of consciousness and other sorts of pro¬ 
cesses in question which may or may not be affected by the lapse 
of time. 

The observers rarely ever attempted during the acts of learn¬ 
ing to recall details or the whole of the material before them. 9 
The whole period of learning was spent in active, attentive 
noting, which was desired in the employment of a learning- 
period of thirty seconds and which was influenced by the in¬ 
structions. Neither over-learning nor the entrance of extraneous 
and more or less subsidiary processes and procedures was de¬ 
sired in the experiment. It was aimed to maintain the sub¬ 
jective conditions as constant as possible, hence a short learning- 
period of thirty seconds was employed, and instructions were 
given to induce active learning. Only in a few cases did the pre¬ 
sented material produce affective and emotional reactions in the 
observer. In using football and other athletic pictures and ob- 

final draft was accepted by him in September, 1917, and was in his pos¬ 
session at the time of his untimely death in February, 1919; and the third, re- 
edited, and amplified draft has been prepared for publication during the 
summer and autumn of 1919, following very helpful criticisms and sugges¬ 
tions given by Dr. S. W. Fernberger, to whom we acknowledge our indebt¬ 
edness. 

9 Kuhlmann’s observers did make trial recalls; but his learning-period was 
10 minutes long, whereas in our own experiment only 30 seconds were al¬ 
lowed for learning. See (92, p. 319) and this paper, p. 15 ff. 


38 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


jects, and comic pictures, we had hoped to arouse experiences 
of pleasantness and unpleasantness in our observers, in order to 
trace genetically the “generic” feeling which Ambrowski (2, 3, 
and 4) has so much emphasized. What affective reactions re¬ 
sulted were in the nature of attitudes of surprise, amusement, 
excitement, wonder, awe, dismay, delight, disappointment, and 
disgust. They were attitudes composed of various components, 10 
—affection seldom functioned alone, without being a member of 
a complex, as a “generic” feeling. Just mere pleasantness, or 
mere unpleasantness, when occurring in its own right, seldom 
had to do with the emotional characteristics of the presented ma¬ 
terial;—it had to do more with the difficulty, or the ease, of per¬ 
ceiving and understanding the material. 

Now we are in position to inquire what were the processes of 
consciousness in function which we have already characterized 
as the active, attentive noting of the material. First of all, the 
observer listened intently to the experimenter’s instructions. 
Then he assumed what may be called a “learning attitude”: he 
settled down in his chair and faced the place of presentation, or 
perhaps leaned toward it; he intently fixated a point or region 
where the material would appear, oftentimes with eye kinaes- 
thesis of fixation with strains and tensions, frequently with gen¬ 
eral bodily tensions and strains and frowning, etc. Very often 
he attempted to anticipate what material would appear; these 
anticipations took various forms, such as visual concrete im¬ 
agery, auditory-vocal-motor and visual verbal imagery of the 
names, the captions, and descriptions of the material, or kin- 
aesthetic imagery of drawing, writing or tracing the material, 
or kinaesthetic imagery of assuming the posture represented by 
the material. Often the observer repeated the instructions in 
vocal-motor-auditory terms. A few introspections will illustrate 
the point. The introspections which are quoted here refer only 
to the foreperiod,—the period which intervened between the 
presenting of the instructions and the presenting of the material 

10 These components we shall discuss when we come to consider the 
analyses of Bewusstseinslagen and the effects of time upon them, Section 
III B iv a, beginning on pp. 93 and 94. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


39 


to be observed. The parentheses within the introspection indi¬ 
cate additions made by the experimenter, in an effort to make 
the introspection as intelligible as possible, especially as regards 
descriptions of learning and recall materials. 

Obs. B. Series I i. Presented November 12, 1915. “In the foreperiod 
I experienced strains in the eyes, forehead, back of neck, and shoulders,—a 
suspension of breathing, and slight unpleasantness; the shutter was in the 
focus of visual perception. All this meant for me interest and attention; 
and I repeated in auditory-vocal-motor imagery the instructions ‘all you can 
—thirty seconds.’ ” 

Obs. F. Series II 1. Presented March 2, 1915. “In the foreperiod I had 
no perceptions, as far as I am now aware; but I did experience strains in 
brow, eyes, jaw, neck, and upper chest; was not aware of any disturbance 
of breathing; close visual attention to the shutter.” 

Obs. Fg. Series II 3. Presented January 18, 1916. “In the foreperiod 
there were visual images of the caption ‘Rubes de Gink’ (a picture showing 
the four persons of the ‘Bringing-Up Father’ cartoons), and then a visual 
image of the newspaper clipping itself.” 

Obs. Fs. Series III 1. Presented April 17, 1915. “In the foreperiod there 
was a relatively non-focal kinaesthesis and organaesthesis of bodily adjust¬ 
ment to the apparatus; auditory perception of the experimenter’s instruc¬ 
tions ; fleeting and indistinct and non-focal occasional visual images of frag¬ 
ments of that circle material (a circular area divided into colored segments 
and sectors) ;—all of which processes gave way just before the exposure 
was made to a visual perception of the shutter,—this visual perception per¬ 
sisted,—this was a waiting for the exposure to be made.” 

Obs. H. Series III 1. Presented November 21, 1915. “In the foreperiod 
I was passive although I expected verbal material; there were vocal-motor 
auditory images of ‘some English sentences’ and vague visual images of type¬ 
written sentences; scrappy visual and vocal-motor-auditory images of the 
sentence shown me last time; I experienced strains in head, upper chest, 
and especially through my arms; breathing was almost inhibited but I was 
fairly comfortable when I fixated the shutter.” 

Obs. O. Series III 2. Presented May 10, 1915. “In the foreperiod at¬ 
tention to the instructions, and my visual line of regard was highly con¬ 
centrated on the shutter; a vague visual image of a brown statue (the 
wooden mannikin), with slight kinaesthesis of my eyes moving in the direc¬ 
tion of the corner of the room, where the statue was located, focally present 
for a brief instant; a very indefinite visual image of the color circle; these 
two visual images alternated and fluctuated in consciousness until the ex¬ 
perimenter presented the learning material.” 

Obs. R. Series IV 1. Presented March 18, 1915. “In the foreperiod 
after the experimenter’s instructions, my attention was highly concentrated 


40 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


on the table in front of me; intensive bodily tension, although I was fairly 
comfortable; there was no consciousness that I could not learn the material; 
vague visual images of the curtain and table in the corner of the room (for 
the mannikin), and also visual images of the white covering cardboard in 
front of me (concealing the learning material to be presented) with nine 
squares on it; vocal-motor-auditory images ‘but the experimenter said that 
it would be presented under the cardboard’; and my attention turned to a 
visual image of the card with its thumbtacks; then came a vague visual image 
of a colored circle.” 

Obs. S. Series V i. Presented January 7, 1915* “In the foreperiod I 
anticipated in visual images a chair sitting up there on the table (behind 
the mannikin curtains) and containing some cards bearing geometrical dia¬ 
grams ; general bodily strain and tension of expectancy.” 

Obs. T. Series Cl 3. Presented January 10, 1916. “In the foreperiod I 
sat down in the chair and faced the curtain; there was no anticipation of 
any particular material; there was only a fixation of visual attention upon 
the curtain.” 

Obs. W. Series V 1. Presented January 12, 1915. “In the foreperiod 
there was a high concentration of attention, visual and general kinaesthetic, 
toward the curtain, with pleasantness and kinaesthesis of amusement; various 
visual images of objects, charts, scarecrows, etc.; kinaesthetic tension in 
shoulders, neck, and forehead, accompanied these visual images and vocal- 
motor-auditory images representing the various objects which I was visual¬ 
izing.” 

The foregoing introspections show that every observer as¬ 
sumed a typical attitude of preparing to learn the material upon 
its presentation by the experimenter; this attitude we call the 
“learning attitude.” It followed the reception of the instructions 
by the observer, and it both preceded and initiated the act of 
learning the presented material. This “learning attitude” con¬ 
sisted mainly of some form of kinaesthesis of adjustment to the 
place of presentation and adjustment to anticipatory images of 
various kinds, such as visual concrete images, visual and vocal- 
motor-auditory verbal images, and kinaesthetic imagery of as¬ 
suming the posture represented by the anticipated material or of 
tracing the anticipated material by means of manual or ocular 
movements. This “attitude” was frequently manifested in the 
observer’s repeating to himself the instructions given by the ex¬ 
perimenter. 

The presentation having been made, the observer visually per¬ 
ceived the material perhaps in a vague and obscure general 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


4i 


fashion at first. Intensive strains and tensions, oftentimes ex¬ 
tending over the whole body, and sometimes pleasantness or 
unpleasantness, accompanied the rather general indefinite percep¬ 
tion. Then certain details of the material began to stand out 
in a fairly focal manner. At this point, there infrequently oc¬ 
curred such emotional reactions as we have described as surprise, 
amusement, excitement, wonder, awe, dismay, delight, disap¬ 
pointment, and disgust. Two other factors entered tO' further 
complicate the experience: first, rather spontaneous and some¬ 
what automatic appearances of vocal-motor-auditory verbal im¬ 
ages of naming and describing the material and of making 
various remarks about it. By automatic we mean that the ob¬ 
server did not consciously or intentionally seek for associative 
and descriptive and characteristic terms. This imagery doubt¬ 
less owed its origin to the observer’s previous experiences with 
the same or similar materials, where he had described or labelled 
certain of its features. Such processes entered very spontane¬ 
ously and rapidly, and did not receive a very high degree of 
focality of attention. Second, there began a stage in which 
perception wandered in aimless and disconnected fashion over 
details and different parts of the presented material. Most often 
there was no consciousness of eye or head or neck kinaesthesis; 
at times, however, such processes did enter the experience. The 
clearness or focality relations of the details perceived in visual 
fashion seemed to usurp or to dominate consciousness to such 
an extent that the kinaesthesis involved in visual noting played a 
very insignificant and infrequent part. In other words, the ob¬ 
server was seldom aware of eye kinaesthesis while he noted the 
presented material; his consciousness was absorbed by or con¬ 
centrated on the clearness values of visual perception rather 
than on the eye movements incident to that visual perception. 
We may here state that every observer in the learning and noting 
of any material made frequent use of vocal-motor-auditory 
imagery. This imagery was at times purely associative in char¬ 
acter, i. e., the details called up more or less remote associations 
of other scenes, other materials, etc.; at other times it was merely 


42 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


descriptive in nature, the observer minutely describing the de¬ 
tails of the material before him. The spontaneous and rather 
rapid use of auditory-vocal-motor imagery by every observer in 
practically every learning experiment seems to warrant the con¬ 
clusion that vocal-motor-auditory imagery, both descriptive and 
associative, is a very important factor in the understanding and 
the learning of materials such as were employed in this investi¬ 
gation. But, as regards the focality or the clearness of such 
processes in the sum total of the conscious processes of any one 
moment of the noting experience, we found an interesting state 
of affairs. Although great quantities of vocal-motor-auditory 
imagery attended the noting experience, this imagery was, gen¬ 
erally speaking, much less clear and less focal than the phases 
of the visual perception itself; that is, the visually perceived 
details of the material seemed to possess a much greater degree 
of clearness than did the details in auditory-vocal-motor imagery. 
Visual perception, considered in this light, was much more simul¬ 
taneous in character than were the images which played worthy 
roles in the noting experience; vocal-motor-auditory images 
were successive in character. Visual perception was less mechan¬ 
ized than was the flow of vocal-motor-auditory images and hence 
received a much greater degree of attention. Being more 
mechanized, the flow of vocal-motor-auditory images moved 
much more spontaneously in the one line or the one direction of 
its succession of images. In its greater degree of clearness,—in 
the longer duration of its clearness,—and even in its very nu¬ 
merous slight shifts of clearness values, visual perception may 
be described here as a dominating consciousness. The charac¬ 
teristic features of this dominance of consciousness were the 
clearness, the persistence of a certain degree of clearness, and 
very facile and numerous shifts of clearness. Observer F. made 
the most frequent and active use of verbal characterizations. 
Observer B., on the other hand, reported the most frequent pres¬ 
ence of visual perception as a procedure of learning; this pro¬ 
cedure of just perceiving, or of “looking intently,” included of 
course many and varied changes of the clearness relations of the 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


43 


details of a material to be learned. This does not deny the fact 
that every observer perceived the material presented for learn¬ 
ing, for otherwise the material could not have been noted. The 
statement, that one observer relied less than the other observer 
upon visual perception alone, means that the one observer spent 
more time, more attention and more effort trying to name and 
to describe details in verbal terms than did the other observer. 
Whereas the other observer spent more time, more attention, and 
more effort in visually perceiving and re-perceiving the details 
of the material. An observer’s time is limited,—his attention is 
also limited; he must perceive the entire material and then re¬ 
perceive it, thus giving a maximum expenditure of effort in per¬ 
ception, or he must perceive a small part of the material, or he 
must perceive the whole of the material in a general and indefinite 
fashion, and then he must resort to subsidiary devices of learn¬ 
ing, such as verbal naming and describing, etc. It is in this 
light that we have characterized Observer F. as a verbal learner, 
and Observer B. as a visual perceptual learner. The other ob¬ 
servers ranged in between these two extremes. Fs., WR ., and 
H. tended toward the visual perceptual end of the noting scale; 
whereas 0., S., Fg., and T. leaned toward a verbal noting pro¬ 
cedure. 

Every observer at some time or other made use of kinaes- 
thesis as a process of learning. This kinaesthetic procedure con¬ 
sisted of two types or classes. First, there was a tracing of the 
lines or the directions of the lines or the various shapes compris¬ 
ing the presented material. This tracing took various forms, 
and every observer was at times accustomed to employ one or 
another form. The forms varied from general bodily kinaes- 
thesis of leaning in the direction indicated by the material, and 
from hand, eye, neck, and head kinaesthesis of locating and of 
drawing and tracing, to tongue and lip kinaesthesis. Observers 
F., T., S., and 0. made the most frequent use of such methods of 
learning; F. and T. employed these forms of kinaesthesis to a 
very large extent. 

Every observer at times experienced during the learning act 


44 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


certain processes which we term empathic. The observer as¬ 
sumed (not intentionally or in consequence of an Aufgabe) the 
kinaesthetic attitude represented by the figure (such as the foot¬ 
ball postures in Series I and Cl, the familiar attitudes repre¬ 
sented by the mannikin in Series V, and the comic attitudes rep¬ 
resented in Series III. These empathic attitudes were com¬ 
plexes. 11 They were usually complexes composed of various ele¬ 
ments of general bodily kinaesthesis, but frequently the com¬ 
plexes included both affective and organic, and even visual 
imaginal, components. The kinaesthesis in the part of the body 
corresponding more particularly with the movement represented 
in the learning material, such as an extended leg or raised arm or 
winking eye, was more focal and more intense in consciousness. 
One striking feature of such empathic complexes was their 
rather sudden and rapid and focal manner of appearing; they 
came instantaneously, and frequently disappeared in a like man¬ 
ner. Another striking characteristic was their composite and 
yet somewhat unitary nature. Various components or elements 
were involved, but these components seemed to be all simul¬ 
taneous, and they differed but little in degree of clearness. The 
task of introspectively analyzing out the various components 
was an extremely difficult one for the observer, and at best his 
description was only a rough characterization. 

As already indicated, the observer’s visual perception of the 
material during the first moment of the presentation was usually 
of a hazy and general sort. A clearer and more definite but less 
general perception followed. In the second stage of this per¬ 
ceiving process, certain features tended to stand out more prom¬ 
inently than other features; the material was typified into a clear, 
unitary perception, just as happens when one attends intently to 
just the face of a full length photograph; some features of the 

11 By the term “complex” we shall mean any group of processes of con¬ 
sciousness which have come to function together in a unity,—in simultaneous 
or near-simultaneous fashion. A complex may be extremely rich in con¬ 
tent and may be comprised of the most manifold constituent processes; or 
it may possess only a few elements, which may or may not be extremely 
mechanized in function. We shall not mean by “complex” the Freudian 
constellation of emotionally-toned ideas around a sex core. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


45 


face seem to become extremely clear and to advance out of the 
plane in which they really are toward the observer, while other 
features recede and wholly disappear from the visual perception 
of the picture. To express it in diagramatic terms,—the focal 
feature would be the apex of a cone extending toward the ob¬ 
server, while the features of less and less great clearness would 
be the curved surface of the cone extending in order of less 
clearness toward the cone’s base; the most outlying and the least 
clear details would comprise the base of the cone. The details 
appearing in this total, unitary, clear perception were the details 
most essential to the integrity 12 of the particular feature in ques¬ 
tion represented by the material, for instance the details repre¬ 
senting a kick in the picture entitled “Kick-Off.” 

Obs. F. Series C I 4. Presented November 17, 1915. “The shutter was 
raised, and I had an instantaneous visual perception of the figure as a whole, 
and vocal-motor images of ‘football player.’ This seemed the immediate an¬ 
tecedent of a partial release of strains.” . . . “The motor image of myself 
being in the position occupied by the player persisted but became much less 
focal in consciousness. My visual fixation, with a clear visual perception of 
the player’s head and his face, held on the details of the player, and thd 
position of his lips attracted my attention, and there came the vocal-motor 
images of the words, ‘that’s funny—must have hurt him—similar to one’s 
lips when one has the wind knocked out of one—it hurts’ . . .” 

Obs. F. Series III 2. Presented October 4, 1915. “There was first a very 
rapid visual perception of the central figure. Attention then went to the 
card-board caption above the figure and I read the caption in visual per¬ 
ceptual terms and by means of accompanying vocal-motor-auditory imagery 
of such descriptive terms as ‘Poker Shark.’ Then came a rapid fixation of 
and turn of attention to the picture and a more concentrated attention to 
the details of the picture,— i. e., the field of attention was very much nar¬ 
rowed. I noted in visual perceptual terms the details which later I recalled. 
Then came a rapid shift of attention to the upper, caption, card and again 
my visual perceptual attention was much more concentrated and narrowed 
during the examination of the details of the caption-card.” 

12 In discussing the effects of old associations, or as he calls them, inter¬ 
ests, in selecting details to be attended to in observational learning and to 
be retained and subsequently reproduced, Meumann (115, p. 136 f.) speaks 
of details and associations which are of no practical use in the world to a 
learner except that they are essential to the integrity of the dominant mean¬ 
ing of a presented material, such as a picture, and which are conducive not 
only to an understanding but also to a remembering of the picture as a 
whole. 


46 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


Obs. O. Series III 2 . Presented May 10, 1915* . My visual line of 

regard fell on the title; and then on the hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs, 
seen almost in one glance, and then visual regard fell on first the title, then in 
order on hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs, each becoming more focal as my 
visual regard focused on it” 

With these essential details, there were rapid, though contin¬ 
uous and unbroken, shifts of focal relations. In such shifts, the 
detail attended to stood out in an extreme degree of clearness, 
making its focal relation apparent at once; and a gradual and 
unbroken lessening of clearness marked the details extending out 
toward the periphery of the concatenations of focal relations. 
Shifts to the detail of the more outlying regions of the material, 
that is, the successive changes of focality, were rather precipitous, 
jerky, and broken in character. In these shifts to the farther out¬ 
lying regions of the material, the detail which had just been focal 
disappeared completely from consciousness in a rather sudden 
manner. The more broken, discontinuous, sudden, and jerky 
shifts of focality, in perceiving, occurred with details less essen¬ 
tial to the meaning of the presented material as a whole. Gross 
■examples of these details were the captions (the titles of the dif¬ 
ferent materials), interpolations of colors in the material by the 
experimenter, sizes of materials, how mounted, etc. If the ma¬ 
terial constituted a coherent whole, for example, the picture of a 
man, the observer usually noted it in a continuous, gradual, 
though moving, fashion, from head down to feet, or from feet 
up to head. However, in later surveys of the material in the 
course of the same learning or noting, the details were very 
frequently noted in a random, haphazard fashion; in this pro¬ 
cedure, difficult details and details in nature more or less unes¬ 
sential, were emphasized and dwelt upon at length and with the 
employment of various associative or descriptive terms which 
we have already described. In attempting to learn certain dif¬ 
ficult features and in seeking to learn as many of the details of a 
material as possible, the observer frequently resorted to various 
Aufgaben. In some instances, the Aufgaben were present in 
vocal-motor-auditory images of the experimenter’s instructions; 
frequently the experimenter himself was visualized, or he was 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


47 


visualized as waiting in an expectant attitude for the exposure to 
end, or his watch was visualized, or he was actually perceived in 
peripheral vision. More often the Aufgabe, or the Einstellung, 
to learn as much of the material as possible, was present in terms 
of the observer’s active, rapid, attentive manner of noting the 
material, and of his frequently repeated noting of certain details 
in order to imprint them securely. Sometimes the observer set 
up for himself Aufgaben similar to the experimenter’s instruc¬ 
tions ; this act of instituting Aufgaben similar to the instructions 
of the experimenter may be conceived as an act of acceptance, or 
at least a more active use, of the experimenter’s instructions. 

It has been stated that the foreperiod, before presentation, was 
characterized by the adoption of a learning attitude, and that 
most frequently this attitude was a kinaesthetic adjustment to 
the apparatus and to the experimental surroundings. Strains and 
tensions, among other components, were largely indicative of this 
adjustment. Upon the presentation of a material, the strained 
attitude usually carried over to initiate the learning experience, 
but it contained elements of expectation, as we have seen; and 
as soon as the observer perceived just what the material was, 
there was usually a slight or total decrease of strains. This does 
not mean that the observer became more passive as regards his 
learning procedure; it means that his expectation was either satis¬ 
fied or was terminated altogether. Bearing this in mind, we find 
that in many cases there was a gradual and progressive increase 
of strains and tensions in the course of the act of learning, fre¬ 
quently reaching a high degree of intensity up to the end of the 
exposure. And in practically every learning experience, the clos¬ 
ing of the exposure of the presented material by the experimenter 
found the observer busy and intent in learning the details of the 
material. 

The observer in the course of clearly perceiving and learning 
the material experienced certain associations, both verbal and 
concrete, of similar data and of objects and events suggested by 
the material. He made frequent remarks concerning the material 
before him. He perceived certain relations or lack of relations 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


between details, or between the details and the caption of a given 
material. In the latter case, he usually commented upon the in¬ 
appropriateness of the caption or the like. Sometimes he mis- 
perceived the relations presented in the material or added new 
elements to it. All four of these phenomena, which are more 
or less similar in nature, we designate as subjective interpola¬ 
tions. In a later section of this paper (p. 108 ff.) we shall at¬ 
tempt to trace the influence of these phenomena upon the recalls, 
both immediate and delayed. 

In order to substantiate the results which we have just dis¬ 
cussed in regard to the observers’ methods and procedures of per¬ 
ceiving and learning the materials presented, and to show the 
typical characteristics of the observers’ introspections of their 
learning experiences, we here cite five quotations from our intro¬ 
spective data; these are chosen at random, and other quotations 
would have served our purposes just as well as these do. 

LEARNING 

Obs. F. Series I I. Presented Nov. 17, 1914. “During the foreperiod, my 
attention was concentrated, and I had vocal-motor images of the words, ‘Gee! 
—I wonder what it (the learning material) will be?—probably those lettered- 
square things!’ I was conscious of strains, referable to my concentrated at¬ 
tention, all over my entire body, and my breathing was inhibited. Then 
came the presentation by the experimenter. Immediately I experienced 
pleasantness, and closely thereupon there came to me the vocal-motor images, 
‘Oh! football!—he’s punting.’ My visual attention shifted to the verbal cap¬ 
tion (located just below the picture) ‘Kick-Off’; by visual perception I read 
the words of the caption, and just then came the exclamation in terms of 
vocal-motor images, ‘the dickens he is!—that’s rotten kick-off f orm!—it’s a 
good punt—.’ I experienced a great deal of motor imagery, kinaesthesis of 
movements of muscles all over my body, especially of all muscles necessary 
for the act of catching the ball and then of punting it. My pleasantness con¬ 
tinued, and there were no accompanying or resulting organic processes of 
consciousness. Suddenly I became aware of the other football player; and 
I said in vocal-motor imagery, ‘He’s starting down the field on the kick-off, 
all right.’ My attention dropped, and my pleasantness continued. Then came 
my remark, in vocal-motor imagery, ‘it is an awfully long thirty seconds!’ — 
‘Oh,—he wants one to master the details—’; then there was a keying up of my 
attention in a visual perceptual manner. The remainder of the learning period 
I spent in visually perceiving and in describing to myself by means of vocal- 
motor images the various details of the material, such details, for instance, 
as ‘red ink,’ etc. At the drop of the shutter, closing the presentation, I was 
prepared to introspect in verbal terms.” 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


49 


Obs. F. Series V i. Presented January 5, 1915. “In the foreperiod, my 
visual attention was highly concentrated; I was experiencing strains through¬ 
out the upper part of my body, in my head, through my brows, and my neck, 
and my breathing was partially inhibited. I said, in terms of vocal-motor- 
auditory imagery, that ‘I bet it is a mannikin!—wonder what it is like?’ At 
that moment the experimenter drew the curtain and presented the learning 
material. With the presentation, these vocal-motor images came to me, 
‘yes,—mannikin—’; a consciousness of pleasantness had now come to me, 
and there was also a release of strains. I made the vocal-motor auditory 
remark that the mannikin was ‘standing/ which latter experience was ac¬ 
companied by a straightening of my own body, this straightening meaning 
for me that I was surprised which was also characterized by a sharp inhala¬ 
tion ; there was here no experience of unpleasantness. The verbal description 
of the mannikin continued in terms of vocal-motor imagery, such details 
were mentioned as ‘undraped—very natural’; at about that time my visual 
attention happened upon the label-caption which had not, up until now, been 
visually perceived,—vocal-motor ‘oh! an orator!—yes, he is speaking,’ which 
experience as a whole was followed by a motor image, without innervation, of 
myself assuming an attitude or posture approximating one which I would 
assume in making a speech but with my left arm extended with a general 
squaring of my shoulders and a throwing back of my head (all of these lat¬ 
ter exepriences were kinaesthetic images or perceptions of actual innerva¬ 
tions, I cannot determine which). Then came the vocal-motor Aufgabe, 
‘get the details!—he emphasized the details,’ with a nod of my head back¬ 
ward indicating the experimenter. There followed a visual perceptual ex¬ 
amination of the mannikin with the accompaniment of a vocal-motor 
imaginal description of the details of the material in nearly the same terms 
in which I recalled them a minute or two ago in my immediate reproduction. 
In that visual noting, one fact stood out very prominently,—it was the detail 
of the hip-joints of the mannikin (the lack of beauty of the joints), and I 
experienced great unpleasantness and the vocal-motor commenting remark, 
‘rotten!’ and there were also present strains of frowning. There followed 
another comment that, ‘no;—have to (be jointed as they are) in order for 
them to be articulated;—if they were not, the mannikin could not do this* 
with a motor image of very strongly flexing my own hip-joint and of bring¬ 
ing my left knee up to my abdomen.” 

Obs. H. Series III 1. Presented November 21, 1915. “I was passive dur¬ 
ing the foreperiod, although, by means of these words, ‘some English sen¬ 
tences,’ present to my consciousness in the form of vocal-motor-auditory 
images, I anticipated and expected the presentation of verbal material; and, 
in addition to these vocal-motor-auditory images, I experienced also visual 
verbal images of sentences of verbal material. I then visualized the sentence 
which I was asked to learn at the last sitting, and this sentence was partly 
repeated in terms of vocal-motor-auditory imagery; and, although there 
were present kinaesthetic strains in my head, upper chest, and through my 
arms, and my breathing was almost inhibited, I felt very comfortable in 
taking the position of fixating the shutter which covered the learning material. 


50 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


Then the experimenter presented the material—my attention, as manifested 
in my visual line of regard, was immediately attracted to the lettering of the 
words ‘Rubes de Gink,’ in order from left to right, and the word ‘Gink 
stood out most clearly, and I experienced a feeling of familiarity which 
consisted of a kinaesthesis of a slight relaxation all over my body and a 
passive, effortless, actual pronunciation of the words ‘Rubes de Gink/ These 
words I repeated several times, and my visual fixation held on these words, 
as shown on the card material, for quite a while. Finally, in auditory- 
vocal-motor imagery, I said to myself this: ‘Yes, he (the experimenter) 
meant this experiment to be a verbal one, dealing with the letters in these 
words (Rubes de Gink)/ Then my attention, my visual regard, and the 
clearness of my visual perception shifted, as though attracted, to the cartoon 
of the man on the extreme left of the material, and held on the humorous 
expression on this man’s face (Son-in-law of the ‘Bringing-Up Father’ car¬ 
toons). Unpleasantness began to come to me as I continued to watch his 
face, which all the while became much more clear and durable than the rest 
of the picture. Then I experienced the eye-kinaesthesis of my regard shift¬ 
ing to the second picture from the left of the four characters, and at that 
moment, I had also the kinaesthesis in my eyes of staring at the picture. 
The picture was that of the elder woman (Mother of the ‘Binging-Up 
Father’ cartoons) ; I watched her face, and then there interposed itself in 
the experience the visual image of the man’s picture (Son-in-law’s) at 
which I had first looked; my fixation shifted to the latter’s picture again, 
and then, by alternately shifting my gaze from one to the other, with conse¬ 
quent alternations in the clearness relations of my visual perceptions, I com¬ 
pared the two pictures; finally, my attention was fixed on Mother’s picture— 
I noted her big hat—my visual perception then was accompanied by vocal- 
motor-auditory images of words in describing her. My visual perceptual re¬ 
gard and my eye-fixation shifted to the detail of her right ear where I 
visually perceived the diamond hanging;—in vocal-motor-auditory imagery, 
these words came to me, ‘diamond is shining—.’ My regard shifted to the 
third picture, that of the young woman (Daughter) ; I stared at her face, 
which was exceedingly clear, and this clearness of my visual perception per¬ 
sisted for a long time. My fixation and my perception shifted to the flowers 
she wore, and, in vocal-motor-auditory images, I said to myself, ‘they are 
roses’; thereupon, my fixation shifted to her face, then to her head, and to 
her hair arranged in a dome-like fashion, and to her curls. Then, somewhat 
suddenly, my attention was attracted to the funny, humorous expression on 
the face of the character number four (Father), especially to his winking 
left eye, this latter feature standing out prominently in clearness—I was 
experiencing pleasantness—and the other details of the picture were very 
vague and obscure.” 

Obs. 0 . Series II i. Presented February 26, 1915. “During the fore¬ 
period, I had an awful time trying to keep my attention from the material 
I learned at the last sitting; there were a great many visual images of white 
cards, localized up here on the screen; I kept singing in order to inhibit, if I 
could, these visual images. Just then the experimenter gave the instructions 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


5i 


that to-day he was going to present to me some new material to be learned. 
Then I said to myself, in vocal-motor images, ‘I wonder if he (the experi¬ 
menter) made a mistake—he presented me new material last time;—I’ll 
wait and see.’ I waited, attention being visually fixated on the screen all the 
while. The experimenter presented the card. Then I had vocal-motor 
images, ‘no, it is a new material’; my visual line of regard went quickly 
and aimlessly over the details of the card. Then came the vocal-motor- 
auditory Aufgabe, ‘go over it definitely and describe every one of the de¬ 
tails’; and, so, I started to work under the influence of that Aufgabe, begin¬ 
ning at the top on the left side and working toward the right, and then 
down, visually noting and then describing in vocal-motor terms each square’s 
contents, using such words as these, ‘twenty-seven,’ ‘leaf,’ ‘g-o—ordinary 
writing,’ ‘blank,’ ‘green triangle and orange circle,’ ‘eight’; I did not name 
the material in the 7th square nor that in the last or 9th square. When I had 
gone through this procedure twice, there came the vocal-motor-auditory 
Aufgabe, ‘get the blank squares’; thereupon I visually noted them and nodded 
my head at each one, having at the same time a kinaesthetic consciousness of 
this nodding. When the two blanks had been noted, I experienced an actual 
movement of my head down from one blank to the other. Then my attention 
fell on the 2d square, the one with colors in it; and then came the vocal- 
motor-auditory Aufgabe, ‘now get the colors definitely,’ and my visual line 
of regard passed all over the card;—vocal-motor-auditory ‘all black but—,’ 
and at this point there was a nodding of my head toward the 2d and 6th 
squares successively, and the colors in the 2d and 3d squares I described in 
terms of vocal-motor-auditory images, such as ‘green triangle with orange 
circle,’ ‘eight, red’; ‘no line either above or below.’ There followed a more 
or less reflex going over the whole card again. While I was on the 1st 
square, I experienced the vocal-motor-auditory Aufgabe, ‘I ought to try to re¬ 
call it now;—no,—I wouldn’t have time; go over them often in order to drill 
them in.’ I got as far as the second line of squares, and then the experi¬ 
menter closed the presentation by lowering the shutter. When I was on the 
1st square of the third row of squares, I studied the details wholly through 
the kinaesthesis involved in tracing out the figure by head movements.” 

ii. The Observers' Methods of Recalling the Material 

In their recalls the observers employed methods and procedures 
which bore a striking similarity to those which they had em¬ 
ployed in perceiving and learning the materials. These similari¬ 
ties manifested themselves in great degree as regards the observ¬ 
er’s learning and ideational type. In employing the term “idea¬ 
tional type” we shall not attempt to classify observers into rigid 
and distinct classes of imaginal representation; we shall mean 
only: a, that under given conditions with a given material, an 
observer was likely to employ certain modalities of images, and 


52 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


to employ them in greater abundance than other modalities; and 
b, that the observer placed more reliance on the appearance of a 
certain sensory type of image in a certain situation than upon 
images from other sense modalities, and a certain image became 
for him an important contributing factor to subjective assur¬ 
ance besides being an expedient means of recall. 

In a total of ninety-three recalls, of the eighteen different 
sorts of materials presented for learning in this experiment, Ob¬ 
server F. reported but two visual images; and these two proved 
to be fleeting, hazy, uncolored, non-intensive, and of brief dura¬ 
tion. F. employed quite an array of vocal-motor-auditory verbal 
imagery, both associative and descriptive in nature. Of equal 
importance was his kinaesthetic imagery, probably of a more 
general character, of empathy, of localizing, of tracing and of 
drawing. He employed kinaesthetic modes of recall even to the 
extent of touching parts of his own body and clothing to repre¬ 
sent details of a recalled material. Frequently he recalled and 
reproduced details in a reflex kinaesthetic manner, as in drawing 
on paper certain figures and diagrams. But it is to be borne in 
mind here that visual perception itself and eye kinaesthesis of 
actual innervation of the eyes played roles of very great import¬ 
ance. The process characteristics of kinaesthetic and verbal con¬ 
scious contents were carriers of meanings of great import for 
the observer. The manner in which contents appeared in and 
disappeared from consciousness,—the focal relations of con¬ 
tents and their changes,—the durability and the stability of the 
contents,—the temporal relations of contents,—the intensity 
relations of contents,—and the manifold different shades of in¬ 
flection,—all these are aspects of mental contents which we mean 
under the term <e process characteristics”; all of these factors 
were highly significant in the procedures of a logical sort of 
memory, which we shall discuss elsewhere (Section III B iv, p. 
93 ff.). Every observer taking part in this experiment fur¬ 
nished introspective data in evidence of the fact that the process 
characteristics 13 of his mental contents played worthy parts in 
his logical memory. 

13 Wundt long ago realized the importance of the process-aspects of mental 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


53 


Observer B. employed great amounts of visual imagery in 
every recall. The visual modality of representation was highly 
significant for her; her visual imagery varied from a great wealth 
of detail to images of the most schematic and fragmentary sort. 
Her introspections specify the presence of every degree of clear¬ 
ness of content, from complete focality and maximal clearness 
in the case of a dominating content to merely marginal presence 
and minimal clearness in the case of a peripheral content. Details 
were visualized in all forms, from a clear-cut and definite man¬ 
ner to a most indistinct, indefinite, and evanescent fashion. She 
frequently experienced the peculiar phenomenon of visual im¬ 
ages superimposed one on another,—various degrees of fusion, 
and of discreteness, of visual images,—and various degrees of 
durability and instability. The manner of appearance of visual 
images, such as suddenness or flash or rapidity or slowness, be¬ 
sides the factors enumerated above, were of utmost importance. 
In addition to visual imagery, this observer employed practically 
all other kinds of imaginal representation,—vocal-motor-auditory 
verbal, empathic, manual-motor, etc. Sometimes the latter mo¬ 
dalities were only subsidiary in function; oftentimes they played 
almost the principal role in the recall. In another section of this 
paper (III B iii, p. 78 ff.) we shall go more into detail in an 
attempt to determine the relation of forgetting, or the lapse of 
time, to the vicarious functioning of imagery. We may safely 
say that for B. visual imagery predominated over other modali¬ 
ties, that she employed other kinds of ideation to a less extent 
than did F., and that in general she relied largely on.her visual 
imagery. 

The other observers varied in their employment of imagery be¬ 
tween the extremes represented by Observers F. and B. If we 
arrange the other eight observers in order of predominance of 
visual imagery over verbal and kinaesthetic imagery we obtain 

contents, for he said (214, p. 123), “the ‘idea’ must be regarded as a process, 
no less variable and transitory than a feeling or a volition”; and (215, p. 
389), “ideas themselves are not objects, as by confusion with their objects 
they are supposed to be, but they are occurrences, Ereignisse, that grow 
and decay and during their brief passage are in constant change” (the italics 
are ours). 


54 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


the following sequence: WFs., R., H., Fg., 0 ., S ., and 7 \ 
Such a classification of observers as tending toward the visual 
or the verbal and kinaesthetic modalities does not mean that 
visual and verbal are mutually exclusive categories of ideation. 
We mean that, relatively speaking, some observers employed 
greater amounts of visual ideation than images of other modal¬ 
ities; that other observers employed relatively greater amounts 
of verbal and kinaesthetic imagery than visual ideation. As ex¬ 
tremes and as representative examples of these two types, namely, 
those observers of a visual type and those of a non-visual type, 
we have mentioned Observers B. and F. Between these extremes 
the other observers are classified in the above sequence. Ob¬ 
server T., like Observer F., employed an abundance of vocal- 
motor-auditory imagery, and frequently reproduced by manual 
and ocular kinaesthesis of drawing, tracing, etc. He frequently 
reproduced details in what seemed to be apparently a reflex kin¬ 
aesthetic manner; when the recall process had been initiated by 
some sort of image, the reproduction frequently continued to 
completion or near completion in an entirely automatic motor 
fashion, as in drawing on paper certain lines and certain other 
features of a material. Visual perception, and doubtless eye- 
kinaesthesis occurring with changes of fixation, and changes of 
focal or clearness relations in the perception itself, were in large 
part responsible for some of the apparently reflex reproductions. 
He reported visual imagery quite often, but in most cases these 
images amounted to little more than barest suggestions of the 
visual form. In fact, this observer experienced great difficulty 
in differentiating his visual images from visual sensations due 
to pressure on the eyeball (his eyes being closed). Observers 
W. and .S', reported, in connection with visual images, the em¬ 
ployment of great quantities of eye kinaesthesis. W 9 s visual 
images were similar to B’s in respect to their great wealth of 
detail; they also were similar to B’s visual images as regards 
the manifold degrees of clearness which attended them; and they 
were capable of functioning in great varieties of situations and 
for the most various meanings. With S., who perhaps occupied 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


55 


a somewhat middle ground between B. and F. as regards the 
predominant use of visual over verbal and kinaesthetic imagery, 
visual images were always very frequent and were very signifi¬ 
cant for the observer. Fs. was largely visual, although she made 
frequent use of imitative movements of tongue and lips (of 
drawing and of tracing). She seldom reported eye kinaesthesis. 
The imagery employed by R. was very similar to that of Fs. 
Tending toward the visual end of the recall scale, that is having 
visual imagery preponderant over other modalities, H. and Fg. 
follow very closely after WFs ., and R. Although at various 
times employing visual images in great abundance and with great 
wealth of detail, and despite the fact that visual images were 
highly significant in experiences of certainty and uncertainty, 0. 
was forced to place strong dependence on the verbal and kinaes¬ 
thetic components of his recall experiences, especially was this 
true when visual images failed to make their appearance or when 
they were extremely vague and schematic in character. In fact, 
the fusion or simultaneity of vocal-motor-auditory images with 
the present visual image was in most cases a contributing factor 
to the acceptance of a datum of recall as correct. In the above 
classification of observers according to their employment of now 
one kind of imagery and now another kind of imagery, we have 
made no hard and fast lines of division, nor have we attempted 
to maintain that any one modality necessarily excludes another 
modality; in fact, one can find no clear-cut lines of demarcation 
between the modalities employed by different observers. Every 
observer reported visual imagery, vocal-motor-auditory imagery, 
empathie complexes of kinaesthesis, and various forms of kin- 
aesthetic reproduction which were concerned with drawing, trac¬ 
ing, and locating, etc. 

That the recalls closely resembled the learning experiences of 
our observers as regards procedures and ideational types is well 
shown by the introspections of all observers. As representatives 
of the introspective material which we have on hand, and showing 
great similarities existing between learning and immediate re¬ 
call, the following two introspections from Observer H. are typ¬ 
ical and serve the purpose for which they are here inserted: 


56 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


Obs. H. Series I i. Presented January 13, 1916. “When the shutter was 
opened, my eye-fixation followed the movement of the shutter and some kin- 
aesthesis of head movement was also involved. As soon as the material 
under the shutter appeared, my eyes fixated on the centre, and I experienced 
eye and head kinaesthesis more keenly; my attention was distributed at the 
centre of the stimulus-material. At first I perceived the material in a gen¬ 
eral, indefinite, indistinct, and unclear fashion. Soon my eye fixation was 
as though drawn to a spot on the upper portion of the card, and then the 
rest of the material disappeared from consciousness very quickly,—my visual 
field was narrowed at the white spot which developed slowly from its lower 
part to its upper part, in the succession of nose, eyes, and hair of the foot¬ 
ball player represented in the picture. Then appeared his ear and mouth. 
My eye followed down the figure, and I perceived the player’s neck, shoul¬ 
ders. chest, and feet. Then I noted his hands; and then again my visual 
fixation went back to his face, which gradually developed as had the other 
features, perhaps more quickly and distinctly as far as details are con¬ 
cerned than the other features had done. This time I discovered the arm- 
band worn by the player, and distinguished between the white and grey 
shading of the player’s body. When my visual attention was on the player’s 
kicking foot in the air, I discovered the other player in the picture; this dis¬ 
covery was a fairly clear one. My eye-fixation alternated between these 
two players, and especially did I compare the styles of their football uni¬ 
forms, and in vocal-motor imagery I concluded that they were football 
players. Then I became aware in visual perception of the title, ‘Kick-Off.’ I 
made some effort to remember the colors of the caption material, and at 
this time I felt strain through my body—visual fixation was held by the 
words of the caption. They stood out clearly and definitely and more 
durably than the other details of the material. My eye-fixation finally came 
back to the nearer of the two players, and in vocal-motor terms I said, ‘two 
straight lines (wrinkles) in his trouser legs,’ and my visual fixation fol¬ 
lowed these lines. When I noted his kicking foot, I had some kinaesthetic 
experience of kicking my own foot, and kinaesthetic images of my own arms 
assuming the posture presented in the picture. There came vocal-motor 
images of ‘Yale and Harvard,’ and a visual image of Harvard and then another 
one of New Haven, Conn. These visual images stood out more prominently 
in consciousness and more durably than the other processes of consciousness 
at that moment. Two or three times I tried to learn the material in kin¬ 
aesthetic terms by trying to assume the position of the kicking player. And 
I tried in visual perception to localize the positions of the first and second 
players.” 

Obs. H. Series I 1. Immediate Recall, January 13, 1916. “I had a visual 
image of the whole figure, but the white places in the visual image were 
the most focal, and the details lying between the background and the men, 
the details of their shoulders and their feet, stood out distinctly. Then in 
the visual image I localized the player’s head with the shadows of his hair 
and the outline of his head. Then a visual image of his ear which was 
not clear came to my consciousness. My eye-fixation, without a conscious- 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


57 


ness of kinaesthesis, moved to the middle portions of his body, especially 
to the shadows and shades represented in his uniform. Then I rapidly 
visualized his foot as a whole and there was a very slight kinaesthetic image 
of my eyes moving and of my right foot starting to kick. A visual image 
of the other player then came to my consciousness, and there was no 
kinaesthesis of any kind,—this visual image persisted for a long time. When 
I visualized the nearer player’s foot, there came to me a visual image of 
the word ‘Kick-In’ (mistaken for the word ‘Kick-Off’). This player’s posture 
was associated with the words, in vocal-motor imagery, that ‘he is kicking 
in’; the player’s posture was represented in a visual image. There was a 
vocal-motor-auditory description of every detail which followed the visual 
imagery of the details. I was uncertain as to the title of the material, and 
this uncertainty consisted of a fluctuation between the red and black of the 
letters of the caption—neither persisted—, and attention was impeded or held 
for a brief moment, and finally attention turned back to the persons of the 
picture.” 


iii. The Effects of Forgetting and of the Lapse 
of Time on Mental Processes 

a. Visual Imagery. The visual image of the immediate recall 
was of the nature of a positive after-image, and usually made 
its appearance at first as a whole. It was focal, intense, durable, 
definite, clear-cut, and colored. It was localized at the place of 
presentation. The background or mounting of a material was 
fused into the one image, the principal figure or material being 
focal, with gradual and continuous gradations of clearness ex¬ 
tending out from the focal figure. Changes of focality, from 
figure to background or to caption, or in an opposite direc¬ 
tion, were easily and quickly effected, although there were no 
abrupt jerks or gaps in the clearness relations. The functioning 
of attention here was very similar to what it had been in the 
perceiving of the material when the material was learned. The 
shifts to the far outlying details, however, were not as precipi¬ 
tous as in the perceiving experience when the material was 
originally learned; in fact, the whole material was present in the 
one visual image to a greater extent than it was present in one 
clear perception. The image tended to become slightly typified 
in character; that is, certain features stood out prominently in 
clearness, while other features receded in clearness or did not 
appear at all in the image,—with the result that the content be- 


58 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


came typified in the form that we described on p. 44 f. 14 . The 
feature which stood out was a feature which was very essential 
to the meaning 15 of the material in question, such for example as 
the kicking-leg in the football picture entitled “Kick-Off” (Series 
I 1); or one side of the figure stood out in undue clearness and 
prominence, with no awareness of the other side of the figure, as 
if this side typified or represented the missing side,—or one arm 
represented both arms, or the front of a figure represented the 
back, etc. These introspections will serve to throw light on the 
phenomenon in question: 

Obs. B. Series I 1. Immediate Recall, November 12, 1915. “The figure 
of the smaller football player in the background stood out, but not in a dis¬ 
tinct or clear-cut manner,—it was not detailed.” 

Obs. B. Series V 1. Immediate Recall, December 8 , 1915* “In the visual 
image of the brown statue, as my attention travelled downward, there was 
no awareness of either the right or the left side of the statue; there was 
just the brown streak in a downward direction showing only the front of 
the statue’s body.” 

14 This process of typification is something other than the process of 
generalization; in a generalized content certain elements have of course 
been lost, while the remaining components are clarified and re-assimilated 
and re-combined into a new unity. In a typified content certain details have 
been lost and others have become less clear, while certain other details have 
been greatly magnified in clearness; this phenomenon of certain details re¬ 
ceding in clearness and certain other details becoming more prominent in 
clearness, somewhat expressed diagramatically by our figure of the cone 
(p. 44 f.), is the essential character of the process in question,—it is not a 
recombining or a re-assimilation but it is a progressive functioning of clear¬ 
ness by means of which certain details come to stand out representatively 
or to typify, certain other similar details; these details go in pairs. Instead 
of a re-combining process the phenomenon of typification is rather a pro¬ 
cess of growth or evolution of certain degrees of clearness which were 
originally present in the perception; this line of progress follows the trend 
present in the original degrees of clearness; if the detail, for instance an 
arm almost hidden from view, were only marginally or unclearly perceived, 
that detail recedes in clearness in the course of the recalls; while the detail, 
the other of the pair of similar details, the unhidden arm, grows clearer 
and seems to become more prominent even in perspective as if to represent 
the missing member. Very often the observer reports that he visualized 
only one side of a figure,—that he had no awareness of the two sides or that 
one side was lacking from his visual image. And this phenomenon reported 
by the observer we call the process of “typification.” 

15 See Meumann’s discussion of this point (115, p. 137); see also our 
footnote on p. 75. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


59 


Obs. Fg. Series III i. Delayed Recall, after n days, October 30, 1915. 
“I did not visualize all of the figures (the two men and the two women) 
of the group as clearly as I visualized the older man whom I call the ‘old 
reprobate’; he seems to have become a representative character for the four 
persons of the picture ‘Rubes de Gink’ and particularly for the two men, 
that is, for the young dude and for himself.” 

Obs. Fg. Series V 1. Delayed Recall, after 70 days, February 15, 1916. 
“In the visual image I saw for a long time nothing but an extended right 
arm; by eye movements I strained in an effort to see what the shapeless but 
black something in the distance in my visual image really was; I repeated 
this attempt three times, my attention sweeping over the area of the visual 
image and always returning to this starting point of the extended right 
arm. Finally, the figure stood out as a whole, but not nearly so focal as the 
extended right arm, which even now continued to be very prominent in the 
whole visual image.” 

Obs. Fs. Series II 3. Delayed Recall, after 73 days, April 3, 1915. “Very 
suddenly there came a focal visual image of that colored circle, covering 
about nine inches (twenty-three centimetres) across the screen and localized 
there; it did not clear up gradually. The details standing out in it were the 
circle itself and the vague lines making the quadrants; none of the details 
were distinct except those of the upper right quadrant; two colors stood out, 
a saturated red and an ink green; the rest of the colors were dark or dull 
indefinite browns; the arrangements of the lines constituting the figure’s form 
were by far the most prominent features.” 

Obs. H. Series V 2. Delayed Recall, after 93 days, May 20, 1916. “The 
shoulders, arms, and main part of the statue’s body did not stand out clearly 
at all, although I had had vocal-motor-auditory images of asking ‘how are 
those details ?’ but they continued to appear in a misty, far-off fashion; I 
could not visualize definitely their outlines,—they were fused with the back¬ 
ground and looked brownish in color.” 

Obs. O. Series V 1. Delayed Recall, after 394 days, January 19, 1916. 
“The general visual image of the mannikin was vague, but the right side of 
the statue was much more distinct and clear than the left side; the right 
side was almost as clear as it had been in my perception of the mannikin; 
the rest of the details were present in a most marginal degree of clearness.” 

Obs. R. Series I 1. Delayed Recall, after 112 days, June 7, 1915. “To-day 
the figure stood out in my visual image in a sort of representative fashion,— 
that is, the features that I have mentioned seemed to possess such vague and 
shadowy connections with the other features that were clear. At the last 
sitting (53 days ago), if I remember correctly, the figure stood out as a 
whole; but today it seems to be broken up and then to be constructed of the 
isolated and disconnected or disjointed parts; a great degree of concentrated 
attention is necessary to bring any definiteness into the connecting parts 
of the figure. 

Obs. R. Series V 1. Delayed Recall, after 7 days, May 6, 1915. “The 


6o 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


figure of the mannikin in my visual image seems to have become more stable, 
so that it does not oscillate as much as it formerly did; the visual images 
seem now to be more symbolic in character,—the gross important details of 
outline stand out; the minor or less important details do not come at all; the 
left shin, the left knee, the right hip, the right shoulder, and the left hand 
were not present in my visual image.” 

Obs. S. Series I i. Delayed Recall, after 14 days, December 3, 1914* “I 
had a visual image of the football player as I started out to recall the ma¬ 
terial; this visual image showed a poverty of details. I began with the 
general position of the player’s body,—this feature of the visual image was 
the first one to occur and was also the one most prominent in clearness.” 

Obs. S. Series II 3. Delayed Recall, after 14 days, March 18, 1915. “In 
my first general visual image of the material in this recall, the colors were 
not definitely anchored or localized; in fact, I was not aware of any particular 
color,—there was an awareness of the fact only that there were colors, for 
the colors all ran together or fused and appeared now here, now there, in 
random sequence.” 

Obs. T. Series V 2. Delayed Recall, after 7 days, December 23, 1915. 
“In the visual image as a whole the waist region of the mannikin and the 
general shape of his extended leg stood out prominently in clearness.” 

Obs. T. Series Cl 5. Immediate Recall, January 17, 1916. “A visual image 
of the figure (the picture of a football player) was present from the beginning 
of the recall and persisted for a long time; this visual image gradually died 
out; it had presented the general position of the player and the greyness of 
the picture; and in this visual image there were arms to the player but there 
was no mark distinguishing the two arms from each other, and the visual 
image did not clear up as to these details.” 

Obs. W. Series I 1. Delayed Recall, after 30 minutes, November 14, 1914. 
“In my visual image of the football player the feature of the left leg raised 
in the air was much clearer than in the immediate recall; there was a rapid 
succession of features clearing up in the visual image, but this clearing up 
occurred only for certain outstanding details of the material.” 

This process of schematizing and typifying, however, did not 
reach extensive proportions in the immediate recall; it was one 
principal point of departure whence schematic visual images 
arose. This phenomenon was one potent factor in giving rise to 
the loss of details which images gradually underwent in the 
course of time. After the visual image had appeared as a whole, 
it was usually followed by an analytical procedure, in which 
dominant, important, and striking parts of the visual image stood 
out successively in clearness, and often with moderate intensity 
and long duration. These parts were arrived at by following 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


61 


out the main figure until one dominant part was reached; but, 
even in the immediate recall, rather spontaneous, jerky and dis¬ 
cursive appearances of these foci were at times to be noted. And 
this, we shall find, was one source from which issued the break¬ 
ing up and the becoming discrete of visual images. The process 
of typification was responsible in part for the extreme clearness 
of certain details; the discursive, analytical, successive procedure 
of recall was also a factor which was conducive to an undue de¬ 
gree of clearness of certain details of a material. This exagger¬ 
ation or increase of the degree of clearness, arising from the 
operation of these two factors of typification and discursive 
analysis, will be found to have borne an intimate relation in the 
later recalls with subjective distortions, interpolations, and con¬ 
structions. 

For those observers who were of the visual type, verbal and 
other kinaesthetic processes played a very minor role in the im¬ 
mediate recall; and when these latter did appear they were usually 
of a subsidiary or accessory nature; they usually did not precede 
the advent of the visual image but occurred synchronously with, 
and immediately following, the visual image or some shift 
clearness in the visual image. For those observers who were not 
so dependent upon visual images, verbal and other kinaesthetic 
processes played a role of much less importance in the immediate 
recall than in recalls after delay. They served to initiate visual 
images, to fill out lacunae or indefinite points in the visual images, 
and to recall minute and difficult details. Very few processes 
which bore the character of logical procedures, such as inferences, 
judgments, certainty and uncertainty, acceptance and rejection, 
etc., occurred with the visual images of the immediate recall; 
after periods of delay, they came in. A discussion of such pro¬ 
cesses, and the effect of time upon them, will occupy our atten¬ 
tion in another section of this paper (p. 93 ff.). 

In recalls seven days after learning, visual images began to 
show indistinctness as regards their backgrounds and settings. 
The figures themselves were fairly distinct and clear, but less so 
than they were at the time of the immediate recall. The image 


62 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


flashed into consciousness in a sudden and spontaneous fashion 
as a whole. It was localized in the place of presentation, some¬ 
times not immediately; its color was somewhat less saturated 
and its intensity had decreased. In the latter two phenomena 
we see beginning a process which will eventuate, at least in part, 
in vagueness and haziness. The course and duration of the 
image was characterized by rapid shifts of focality from one 
feature to another, and this recall manifested a greater number 
of such shifts than did the immediate recall. The shifts were 
much more discrete and discursive in character than they had 
been in the immediate recall; the area moved over by attention 
or the shift of clearness was perhaps not as great as the area 
involved in the immediate recall. The latter fact was particularly 
true where attention or the shifting of clearness followed a con¬ 
tinuous direction, such as following out the whole length of a line 
in one direction only, or beginning at the top of a figure and 
continuing to the bottom, etc. The typifying process was much 
more intensive and extensive in its effects. Details more remote 
from the focal detail or details, and details of least significance 
for the material to be recalled, made their appearance much 
more slowly in consciousness. Such remote and insignificant 
details were fewer in number than they had been in the immediate 
recall, many of them having dropped out in the interval of seven 
days; and those which were present were much more difficult 
to recall than they previously had been, oftentimes entailing eye- 
kinaesthesis of tension and strain, and sometimes kinaesthesis 
from other parts of the body, in the observer’s effort to recall 
them. The more important details stood out clearly, but in a 
more indistinct manner than formerly. The appearing of the 
visual image as a whole was not of such a nature as to be so 
easily set over against the analytical and discursive procedure 
which had been characteristic of the second stage of the imme¬ 
diate recall. In fact, the two modes of appearing were nearer 
together in kind as well as in time, that is, a shorter time interval 
intervened between the appearing of one and the appearing of the 
other. In time, it was discovered, they had approximated a 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


63 


mean, which manifested itself in the successive appearances of 
separate images, though schematic and hazy in character and 
quite similar in nature. 

After fourteen days, the recall was more difficult to initiate. 
The observer’s procedure in his endeavor to recall consisted in 
repeating the caption several times in vocal-motor-auditory im¬ 
agery. Then there came a vague and non-localized visual image 
of the title. This was followed by a spontaneous, sudden flash¬ 
ing in of the visual image of the material as a whole, this image 
usually being localized just in front of the observer’s 
eyes at a distance of thirty millimetres or so. One 
feature, the central or dominant one, or the most con¬ 
spicuous one, of the material, stood out in relatively un¬ 
due clearness, while the adjacent and less conspicuous features 
appeared in lesser clearness and in smaller size than the dominant 
focal feature; they were much more indistinct and undetailed, but 
of similar form with the focal feature. The focal feature 
was colored to a fair degree of intensity, while the more obscure 
features appeared hazy and washed-out; this fact, namely the 
haziness, and the washed-out character of the non-focal features, 
and the differences in size and clearness, gave to the image a tri¬ 
dimensional appearance, the adjacent non-focal details appearing 
behind the clearer, central feature; this phenomenon was very 
similar to the typified contents, which were discussed on pages 
44 f. and 57 f. The visual image disappeared and reappeared sev¬ 
eral times, but the repetition of the caption in vocal-motor-audi- 
tory terms continued. The character of the image, together with 
its mode of functioning, and the continued presence of the cap¬ 
tion-consciousness, indicated that a certain degree of forgetting 
had taken place and that a relatively slight degree of subjective 
assurance now attached to the observer’s images. At a later stage 
of this recall, this image suddenly dropped out of consciousness. 
Slowly, in its stead, separate successive visual images of the 
separate details or features made their appearance. In this pro¬ 
cedure of the coming of successive, discrete visual images, in¬ 
stead of one whole visual image, each separate image represented 
its feature much more clearly and in a more persistent and durable 


64 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


manner than had been the case of the whole visual image of the 
earlier stages of this recall, although the far-outlying regions of 
each of these discrete images were blurred and indistinct. Em¬ 
pathy entered the experience as an aid to the observer in his 
attempts to recall the details and the general form of the postures 
represented by the material; frequent shifts in the visual images, 
with then similar shifts in the empathic imagery, occurred as 
processes by means of which the observer corrected errors in his 
recall and further augmented the quantity of the details already 
recalled. 

In recalls twenty-one days after the presentation the visual 
image projected itself to almost any locality with relative ease. 
This phenomenon of the easy projection of visual images was 
characterized by the spontaneity with which the image changed 
its location; and the changes of localization were in no wise 
traceable to any deliberate or intentional act of the observer. 
The detaching of the location of the image from the place at 
which the material had been presented occurred in a rather pro¬ 
gressive fashion in the course of time. The details were recalled 
by means of separate discrete images, which showed practically 
no fusion of, or flowing into, one another. The general shapes 
of certain features appeared in the visual image as a whole, but 
there were in this visual image rapid, jerky, and non-durable 
shifts of focality to the more specific shapes comprising the ma¬ 
terial. The shapes of features tended to shift and vacillate and 
to be very instable. In the first stages of this recall the shapes 
or forms of features were broken loose or were detached from 
their appropriate colors. The recall of the color was initiated by 
vocal-motor-auditory images; and this initial verbal recall was 
followed by a pale visual image of the color which appeared in 
a slow, non-spontaneous manner. When the color made its en¬ 
trance into consciousness through a concrete visual image, it filled 
its proper space in the schema, that is, filled its appropriate and 
definitely localized form. And, after appearing in a definitely 
localized manner, the visual images of the colors alternated, one 
with the other, first as to position, and second as to their actual 


i 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


65 


hues or tints. A very significant feature of the functioning of 
the concrete visual images of colors in this recall was the fact 
that they were difficult to initiate and that they appeared in 
consciousness in a slow and tedious manner. In contrast to this 
phenomenon of a slow and labored arousal of visual concrete 
images of colors, the very existence of these images in conscious¬ 
ness was attended by all manners of fluctuation and vacillation, 
and they dropped out of consciousness in a very sudden and easy 
manner, and oftentimes the observer’s efforts to hold them were 
in vain. These two phenomena,—the slow and difficult initia¬ 
tion of concrete visual images of colors, and the quick and spon¬ 
taneous manner in which they disappeared from consciousness 
even against the observer’s efforts to retain them, were two ef¬ 
fects of forgetting and of the lapse of time. This recall was 
characterized by a profusion of eye kinaesthesis and motor 
images of the act of drawing certain features, and in numerous 
instances, by an inhibition of breathing. These kinaesthetic fac¬ 
tors were very prominent in cases where the observer attempted 
to recall details of form and of color. 

The recall after twenty-eight days was rather slow and hesi¬ 
tant; such contents as were here reproduced were initiated by a 
vocal-motor-auditory repetition of the title and by a visual image 
of the place where the material had been presented. The figure 
represented by the material, or the detail to be recalled, was present 
in this visual image but was localized to the right or to the left 
of the observer and appeared in a far-off distant manner; and it 
was of a shadowy texture. Here we see that the material, al¬ 
though it has been initiated in part by a visualizing of the place 
of presentation, has broken away from that location; further than 
this, the figure appeared bereft of its own proper background. 
And, increasing the complexity of the recall experience as well 
as showing the effects of forgetting, visual images of other fig¬ 
ures or of other materials were superimposed upon this one. 
They were less shadowy in appearance and were characterized 
by a greater degree of focality. Even kinaesthesis of eye-move¬ 
ments entered the recall experience as if to aid the observer in 
his endeavor to see the figure more distinctly. To unravel such 


66 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


a puzzling and highly complicated mass of images, to recall one 
as correct, the observer made use of ’various subsidiary pro¬ 
cesses; 16 —vocal-motor-auditory images, other visual images with 
varying content and changes of focality and durability, and em- 
pathic processes were of utmost importance in these acts of un¬ 
ravelling the recall contents. All visual images at this stage 
seemed to be blurred except perhaps for some extremely focal 
detail. The standing-out of a detail,—to whatever extent this 
event occurred,—the rapid and discursive appearances of other 
whole visual images, and the phenomenon of one or more visual 
images overlapping another visual image, manifested in this re¬ 
call certain effects which they had wrought in the course of time 
on the recalled contents; subjective additions had been made in the 
details of the visual images, such for example as a football player 
“running down the field and looking back at a larger player.” 
(The picture which had been entitled 'Kick-Off,’ had presented 
two stationary players, one behind the other; and no part of the 
football field had appeared in the picture). The following in¬ 
trospection is illustrative: 

Obs. B. Series I I. Two football players, the larger and front player 
kicking the ball; entitled ‘Kick-Off’). Delayed Recall, after 28 days. De¬ 
cember 10, 1915. Two visual images had been overlapping a third one, with 
a veritable play of changes of focality and fluctuations of details. “In visual¬ 
izing the arm positions of the front player I experienced some slight kin- 
aesthetic imagery in my own arms; the arms in the visual image were 
blurred and the blur held the focus of attention for a moment; then came 
another visual image of a football player, appearing as if on another picture 
in the background; the latter player was of small stature, in football regalia, 
and was running and looking toward the front or central player.” 

The recalls after intervals of twenty eight days or more 
showed visual images which had suffered decay and obscuration 
in ways very similar to those which had characterized recalls 
after shorter intervals of time. In general, the images became 
progressively more vague and indistinct; they were less spon¬ 
taneous in their advent; they were less intensive and of shorter 
duration; they showed an extreme degree of instability. Visual 

16 We shall discuss all such subsidiary processes of consciousness in Sec¬ 
tion III B iv, p. 93 ff., of this paper. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


67 


images decreased in size, losing details rapidly at first and then 
more slowly as time elapsed. The details present focally in any 
one visual image manifested a certain well-knit, typified charac¬ 
ter; and they were characterized by only slight tendencies to 
analysis. The discursive shifts of attention between the details 
of any one image were very infrequent phenomena at this stage 
of forgetting. Although there were relatively few discursive 
shifts of attention which would have led to an analysis of any 
one image, yet there were a greater number of separate, discrete 
visual images; and these frequently overlapped one another, or 
they fused one with the other, or they alternated and fluctuated 
in consciousness. In recalls after long intervals, the visual 
images were found to be characterized by alterations, interpola¬ 
tions, omissions, and out-and-out newly constructed contents. The 
process of subjective interpolation, however, did not in general 
(so far as the recalls were carried in this experiment) continue to 
a point where the observer’s recall contained nothing but alterations 
of old contents and constructions by means of wholly new con¬ 
tents. Visual images as wholes were characterized by frequent 
additions of details; a detail was added here, and another detail 
was added there, and there were alterations among the old de¬ 
tails. The mass of recalled contents or the details in one whole 
visual image manifested the effects of additions and other sorts 
of alterations. There were no separate visual images, each image 
newly and wholly constructed in itself; the changes wrought by 
the passage of time and by forgetting, which we have denoted as 
subjective interpolations, always occurred within the body of 
details contained in one whole visual image. In other words, 
the constructive or additive process progressed more slowly than 
the destructive or substractive process (forgetting proper) which 
was characterized by the dropping out of imaginal details. Or, 
to express it more adequately and more accurately, forgetting 
was the result of at least two somewhat reciprocal processes: a 
process of losing details, with a characteristic typifying and dis¬ 
integrating of the image; and a process of subjective selecting, 
interpolating, and clarifying. The latter process, namely the 


68 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


process of assimilation, moved more slowly than the process of 
dissociation and decay, and was in large part dependent on it. 
As time elapsed, however, we could see that the second process,— 
the process of subjective interpolating,—encroached upon the 
first process and henceforth progressed with greater acceleration. 

To Freud belongs the credit for having discovered what are now called 
by some psychologists conscious mechanisms, by other psychologists nervous 
mechanisms. That there are mechanisms,—that is, organized, automatized 
and syncopated forms or modes of reactions to stimuli, whether in the 
fashion of conscious processes or patterns of reflex behavior,—cannot be 
doubted. That Freud’s list of mechanisms exhausts the possibilities for the 
human behavior and for the human consciousness, can be seriously ques¬ 
tioned. That his contention that these mechanisms are peculiar to a dream 
activity and appear only in dreams, is true, can be very seriously doubted; and 
furthermore, his assumption that the motive force and the origin of these 
mechanisms is to be found in some repressed sexual wish, dating back to 
childhood, is open to serious question. 

He says (61; 79) that there are four principal mechanisms of dreams, 
namely: Condensation, Displacement or Transposition, Dramatisation, and 
Secondary Elaboration. The mechanism of condensation, stripped of Freud’s 
“unconscious” mythology, is that phenomenon of the reduction of a great 
multitude of details or data of experience to a few important items which 
occupy a small compass in consciousness, for example the details represented 
in the ordinary, everyday memory image. It would seem that had Freud 
been better acquainted with his own images of recall or of imagination, 
instead of with his dream images alone, he would not have devoted so much 
space or so much logic or so much myth to his dream-mechanisms; the 
ordinary image, namely the so-called memory-image, possesses many features 
in common with the dream image, the principal feature in common being this 
mechanism of condensation or representation, and very similar to it we have 
discovered a mechanism of typification which is characteristic of everyday 
forgetting and which on its face bears no evidence of repression or of a 
dream activity or the avoidance of a censor which separates the conscious 
from the unconscious. 

Transposition or displacement is no more than the juxtaposing of details, 
for instance in a memory image, or the change from clearness to obscurity 
or the change from obscurity to clearness, or some detail which has been 
only minimally intense becomes in the course of repeated recalls (through 
ordinary images or through the images of dreams) maximally intense. This 
juxtaposing can take place in the spatial arrangement of details, in their 
temporal course and succession, in their focality relations, and in their intensity 
attributes. This form of alteration was the commonest to occur in memory 
contents in our experiment as the observers began to forget and continued 
to forget the materials that they had learned. So far as the phenomenon 
sheds light upon its origin it is no more than an ordinary process of for¬ 
getting; it is no more than the working of assimilation, and we have no 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


69 


reason whatever to say that the phenomenon is peculiar to dreams or that 
it is motivated by repressed sexual complexes. It would be easier to say, 
and the saying would throw more light upon all the facts concerned, that 
the same process of assimilation which shows itself in the ordinary facts of 
forgetting also is responsible for the transposition and displacement of con¬ 
tents and details which one finds in dreams. 

Freud supposes that the dream depicts always some situation or some 
action; this mechanism of action or situation is called dramatization. An¬ 
other feature of this mechanism is its selecting influence on the contents that 
come to consciousness. With respect to the acting or the functioning which 
is always characteristic of contents of consciousness, whether they be present 
in the image of the dream or the image of ordinary memorial recall, we can 
say that there was dramatization shown in every recall by every one of our 
observers;—and this phenomenon has occupied our attention in numerous 
places in this article, where we have attempted to discuss fully the process- 
aspects of mental contents, particularly with regard to the mechanisms of 
acceptance and rejection, and certainty and uncertainty (pages 113 to 133). 
Our observers, particularly Observer B. (see page 98 ff.), frequently reported 
in describing their recalls of materials which had been almost entirely for¬ 
gotten that the contents were very active,—the contents came to consciousness 
suddenly and disappeared from consciousness in a like manner,—the images 
seemed to be in play trying to supplant one another and at times seemed to 
attack each other, to ultimately fuse together,—and the observer seemed to 
sit back and to act only the part of spectator to this interminable dramatiza¬ 
tion of mental contents. It must be emphasized that the contents became 
more and more active the greater the progress of forgetting and the more 
extensively the details were loosened from their own backgrounds, from 
their associated details, and from their successive contextual accompani¬ 
ments. Freud goes on to state that in the dream the dreamer does no in¬ 
tellectual work,—that there is intellectual work going on in the unconscious 
dream contents. We are not prepared to say that there was no intellectual 
work going on in our images of recall; in fact the evidence, that is mechan¬ 
isms of acceptance and rejection, and mechanisms of certainty and uncer¬ 
tainty, points to the fact that there was a great deal of intellectual work 
present in every recall in our experiment; but this intellectual work did 
not manifest itself in consciousness outside of the contents that were present, 
—the contents themselves were working or were active and thus presented 
a situation or an event; and this functioning of recall contents was a select¬ 
ing of contents, many of which were reproduced as true data of learning 
and many were rejected as not being correct, and many continued to function, 
to come to consciousness and to leave consciousness, in a manner which we 
may call rejection, and many of them incorrect and subjectively inserted were 
recalled and this act of reproducing them may be called acceptance. Besides 
the activity manifested in the contents themselves while present in conscious¬ 
ness, we may say that there was an activity present in the contents in moments 
between recalls; the recalls after various lapses of time indicated various 
changes in the contents, these changes having transpired after the previous 
recall was had; and, since the observer was not, in this interval of time, 


70 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


conscious of such changes taking place in the contents, we must not say 
that the changes were occurring in some storehouse or dungeon of un¬ 
conscious consciousness. It is enough to say that many happenings occur in 
the nervous system and we are never conscious of what happened; and fre¬ 
quently many things happen in the nervous system the effects of which hap¬ 
pening we never have represented in consciousness until long after the 
happening has transpired. These facts do not necessarily lead one to posit 
the existence of a mysterious realm of the unconscious conscious with its 
mysterious ghosts and forces and guards and disguises, et cetera. 

Secondary elaboration is a mechanism most familiar to those persons 
who have witnessed the passing of stories, and gossip, and scandal, by second 
and third hands; and to those persons who have been acquainted with the 

testimony given by witnesses in court; yea, it is a mechanism well known 

to those psychologists who believe that it itself is responsible for much of 
Freud’s logic and system applied to dream events and to many details of dream 
contents, particularly for much of the logic and systematization to be found 
in Freud’s interpretation of dream contents as symbols for hidden sex mean¬ 
ings. But we have found reason for asserting that the mechanism oper¬ 
ates just as often in the images of everyday recall as in the dream and 
in the consciousness which just succeeds the dream; yet we are far 

from asserting that dream contents, on the one hand, and recalled 

memory contents, on the other hand (the two are not so' widely different as 
this sentence would make them), are devoid of order, of sequence, of system, 
w^hen they course through consciousness in their primitive or natural state; 
nor are we disposed to assert that their mere passage through or presence in 
consciousness, or the mere attempt by the reagent to unravel them, produces 
such a miraculous and such a neat and ordered change in them (the reader 
will find that we go more into detail in discussing this point in Section 
III B iv b, c, d, p. 108 ff.). Indeed, we have no evidence which would force 
us to go further than four laws of attention and Jost’s law of associations 
go. These laws state that attention to a content increases its clearness and 
decreases the clearness of some content attended from; that attention to a 
content increases its intensity; that attention to a content causes it to rise 
into consciousness more quickly than any other content occurring simul¬ 
taneously with it; that attention to a content lengthens its duration in con¬ 
sciousness; and that the recall of the older-of two equally strong associations 
will strengthen the older much more than it will the younger. It is, however, 
our contention that, recall or no recall, there is present and there is active in 
the retained contents the working of both the mechanisms of dissociation and 
assimilation, and the effects of these mechanisms or the work that they have 
wrought will never be known to the reagent, or to any one else, unless the 
modified and altered memory contents are recalled at some time or other to 
consciousness or make their presence felt in some modified form of the 
behavior of the learner, who is also always forgetter; indeed, it is just the 
reagent, who has done the learning and the forgetting, who will be the 
last person on earth to fully realize that, during his sleeping and during his 
waking moments, while he consciously tried to recall what he had once 
learned or during moments when he was completely unaware of any attempt 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


7i 


to recall what the data of learning really were, that, all the while, he was 
elaborating the contents retained, and that, whenever later these contents 
appeared in consciousness, they bore the character of the effects of secondary 
elaboration. Freud’s attempt to explain away what order or what system he 
finds in dream contents, by asserting that this order, and this arrangement, 
and this system is a symbol through which some hidden sex complex strives 
to see the light of day, is not only sheer logic, apparently done to cover up 
Freud’s intellectual tracks, but is wholly gratuitous, and begs the very 
question which Freud is trying so hard to prove, and, what is more, his 
contention is a contravention of the facts of everyday forgetting which we 
have accumulated in this investigation. 17 

All of the four so-called “dream-mechanisms,” namely, the mechanisms of 
condensation, displacement or transposition, dramatization and secondary 
elaboration,—alleged by Freud (79, p. 331) to belong peculiarly to a dream¬ 
making process which is “more distant from waking mental life than even 
the most determined detractor of dream activities would maintain,”—we 
have found to be present in ordinary, everyday acts of recalling learning ma¬ 
terials after various degrees of forgetting have taken place. We have found 
reason for believing that they, the mechanisms, are mechanisms of for¬ 
getting ;—they manifest themselves in the forms of forgetting which 
we have already discussed under the rubrics of dissociation or the 
subtractive process, and assimilation or the additive, alterative and inter- 
polative process. We believe also that these two processes, of dissociation 
and assimilation, are responsible for much of the weirdness and the distor¬ 
tion found in dreams, and that, as a consequence of the workings of disso¬ 
ciation and assimilation, we can find the four mechanisms of condensation, 
transposition, dramatization, and secondary elaboration present in dream 
contents;—we believe that, at bottom, dream images and images of ordinary, 
everyday recalls, after much forgetting has occurred, are much alike and 
have much in common. We have found no reason for asserting that re¬ 
pression played even the most insignificant part in the forgetting of the 
various materials employed in our investigation;—the phenomena of for¬ 
getting furnish us not one single trace of the influence exerted by repression, 
nor do these phenomena bring to light any evidence of the existence of 
sexual complexes whose strange influences Freud would look for in all cases 
of dissociation and assimilation. 

17 Parenthetically, we might add, there are other investigators who share 
with us our antagonism toward many of the monstrosities of Freudianism. 
Elsewhere, p. 4 f., in this paper, we have referred to the work of Ransch- 
burg (156) ; we should like to call the reader’s attention also to the dis¬ 
cussions by the following men: Wells, F. L., (203, p. 126) ; Woodworth, 
R. S., Some Criticisms of the Freudian Psychology, Jour, of Abnorm, 
Psychol, XII., 1917, 174-194; Stephen, A., On the Assumptions of Psycho- 
Analysts, Jour, of Abnorm. Psychol, XIII., 1918, 17-22; Chase, H. W., Dr. 
Prince and the Question of the Subconscious, Jour, of Abnorm. Psychol., 
XIII., 1918, 29-32; and Roback, A. A., The Freudian Doctrine of Lapses and 
Its Failings, Amer. Jour, of Psychol, XXX., 1919, 274-290. 


72 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


An observer actively resists forgetting. His seeming forget¬ 
ting is more apparent than real. There are the processes of dis¬ 
sociation and assimilation, both active, destroying and modifying 
the contents. The former of these processes, the process of dis¬ 
sociation, moves faster in the initial stages of forgetting than 
does the latter, while in the later stages of the forgetting-strug- 
gle, the assimilative process moves with a greatly increased ac¬ 
celeration. Both of these processes produce and lead to very grave 
alterations in the recalled contents. And, yet, notwithstanding 
these facts, we must make the statement that the observer actively 
resists forgetting. We find him making use of a great number 
of procedures of a logical sort of memory in an effort to recall 
the material which the experimenter has requested him to recall. 
These acts, and these procedures, 18 to offset forgetting and to aid 
memory and recall, included many processes of consciousness, 
many of them in themselves exhibiting only slight effects of for¬ 
getting and many others showing rather striking effects of for¬ 
getting. Indeed, even in cases where a long interval of time has 
elapsed between the learning-presentation and the recall, the ob¬ 
server sometimes reports that when he attempts to recall he finds 
that he possesses a great number and variety of visual images,— 
which alternate and fluctuate and fuse and vanish,—and yet, 
notwithstanding this profusion of imaginal content, he finally re¬ 
ports that he is unable to remember the experience which he has 
been asked to recall. In such an experience, however, the ob¬ 
server reports that he employed various aids and procedures in 
an effort to remember the originally presented material; these 
processes or procedures, such as attitudes of certainty and un¬ 
certainty, acceptance and rejection, inferences, etc., all constitut¬ 
ing a logical sort of memory, played a most important part in 
the attempted recall, and, as criteria of the effects of forgetting, 
they were perhaps at this stage more important than the imaged 
or recalled contents themselves. They show resistance to forget¬ 
ting and in many cases manifest in themselves certain effects of 
forgetting. These significant aiding processes will occupy our 
attention in a later section of this paper, where we shall attempt 
18 Treated in detail in Section III B iv, p. 93 ff., this paper. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


73 


to throw light on the vicarious functions characterizing recalls 
after long periods of delay. 

b. Vocal-motor-auditory Imagery. From our discussion of 
the observers' methods of recall and the analysis of the effects 
of time and forgetting on visual images, it is evident that as for¬ 
getting progressed the recalls of all observers tended to have re¬ 
course more and more to vocal-motor-auditory imagery. This 
does not mean that a vocal-motor-auditory image which had 
been present in the learning or in the immediate recall always 
continued to occur, or that its fidelity persisted unimpaired until 
the last delayed recall. It means that the relative number of 
vocal-motor-auditory images increased and that images of this 
modality became relatively more frequent as the time elapsing 
since the presentation became longer. Details which had been 
remembered in earlier recalls and which had not been present to 
consciousness in terms of auditory-vocal-motor imagery tended 
more and more to' appear in terms of auditory-vocal-motor im¬ 
agery as time elapsed and forgetting progressed. Then, too, the 
temporal order of the appearing of vocal-motor-auditory images 
tended to change; where, in the earlier recalls, the vocal-motor- 
auditory imagery had followed or had occurred simultaneously 
with other contents, in later recalls it preceded or escorted other 
contents. The fact that it was simultaneous with other contents, 
notably with visual and kinaesthetic imagery, or that it fused 
with them to form complexes in certain situations, was a matter 
of great importance to the observer. Its functioning or its advent 
at some particular point of a recall was a highly significant factor. 
As regards the life history of vocal-motor-auditory images from 
the immediate recall to long-delayed recalls two somewhat con¬ 
trasting tendencies were to be noted. On the one hand, the 
images became more rapid and transient in passage, more syn¬ 
copated and fragmentary in content, and more loose and de¬ 
tached in their contextual relationships. On the other hand, the 
images took on significant modes of inflection,—such for ex¬ 
ample as forcefulness, emphasis, loudness, hesitancy, question¬ 
ing, etc. Factors included under both of these classes played 


74 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


worthy roles in logical memory. 19 Images of the first group,— 
that is, those which were more abrupt and transient, became pro¬ 
gressively more mechanical and automatic in the course of time; 
in their coursing through consciousness their progress was more 
facile and unconstrained, and they received only a minimum of 
attention. The second above-mentioned tendency exhibited, on 
the contrary, a long drawing-out character of the imagery,—a 
haltiness, a slow flow of images. In the former class, connecting 
and relational words were slurred over or were hurried over, 
being non-intensive and manifesting only a low degree of focal- 
ity; while the important words, and words having to do with 
significant details, were usually more focal, and sometimes were 
dwelt upon and emphasized. In the latter case, the two tenden¬ 
cies were not so far separated,—they were not wholly unrelated. 
Vocal-motor-auditory images, as time elapsed, tended to undergo 
certain repetitions by the observer in a given recall. The ob¬ 
server repeated certain details, sometimes in a questioning man¬ 
ner, and often in just a dead, slow level of intonation,—and 
when certain combinations or certain orders of the details were 
reached, the factors of rapidity, focality, ease, forcefulness, 
questioning,—the appearance of muscular, motor, organic and af¬ 
fective reactions linked with a given combination or order of the 
details,—and even modifications of the visual image itself,—and 
shifts of attention,—all these phenomena or any one of them 
may have exerted a determining influence upon the acceptance 
or upon the rejection of the material as correct, or upon sub¬ 
jective assurance or subjective lack of assurance, and may have 
determined just what the reproduction was going to be at this 
point. In this capacity, that is, as processes of a logical memory, 
to which we have so frequently referred in this paper, vocal- 
motor-auditory imagery was employed by all of our observers; 
such a state of affairs was frequent, and was especially so as for¬ 
getting progressed with the lapse of time. Vocal-motor-auditory 
images seemed well adapted to the recall and conservation of i. 
more or less insignificant details of a material; 2. those details 

19 In Section III B iv, p. 93 ff., of this paper, we shall go more into detail. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


75 


less essential to the meaning of the given material as a whole, 
and 3. those details artificially inserted by the experimenter. The 
more striking the detail, and in a measure the more extraneous 
or irrelevant it was to the dominant meaning conveyed by the 
picture or character represented by the material, the less was this 
one image in the course of time altered qualitatively by the dom¬ 
inant meaning to fit into the main context. In other words, we 
have a dominant meaning represented, for example by the pic¬ 
ture of a football player kicking the ball with his right foot, and 
there are details, many of them of minor importance but all con¬ 
ducing to the whole picture as a whole, that is, to the dominant 
meaning; and there are other details which add nothing to the 
dominant meaning and subtract nothing when they are removed 
from the picture. The former details were the more likely in 
the course of time to be altered 20 in the direction of the dominant 
meaning; they underwent the effects of typification, generaliza¬ 
tion, assimilation, and of re-organization,—all tending toward 
a better organized apperceptive mass in the direction of that pre¬ 
viously presented dominant meaning. The latter details, those 
irrelevant and extraneous to the dominant meaning, were the 
less likely to be altered qualitatively into the context of the dom¬ 
inant meaning; they tended to exist or to be conserved rather 
as independent, isolated, discrete images; and the more striking 
they were the greater were their chances for independent sur¬ 
vival. This statement does not mean that nonsense ma¬ 
terial is better remembered than meaningful material; the de¬ 
tails extraneous to the presented dominant meaning may possess 
great meaning taken in their independent entities. In fact, there 
seems to be a medial line, beyond which those details less linked 
up with meaning are more readily forgotten,—and above which 
details too closely in line with certain presented meanings are 
influenced and warped and altered in the course of time so that 

20 Meumann cites (115, p. 8) an illustration from Rodenwaldt which is 
apt here: observers who had been shown a picture of an infant in a cradle, 
remembered the cradle to be brown, whereas in the picture the cradle had 
been a conspicuous blue. On page 137 Meumann cites the fact that ob¬ 
servers failed to remember the dog in one of Stern’s pictures because the 
dog was not essential to the meaning of the picture as a whole. 


76 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


they come to resemble and to represent certain details of a ma¬ 
terial which originally they did not very closely represent or re¬ 
semble. The closer the relation of the detail to the general dom¬ 
inant meaning of the material, the more augmented was the effect 
of this kind of forgetting, namely assimilative or generalizing 
forgetting, upon it. The effects were not manifested so notice¬ 
ably in an image of one detail itself, but in its context or in its 
associative connection with images of similar details. In a word, 
in proportion to the similarity of the details, other images in the 
course of time came to present details similar to those in the 
original material but which were actually not there; and by this 
phenomenon the general meaning was being added to and gener¬ 
alization in line with that meaning was in progress. This state 
of affairs is very much in accord with what we saw of the dis¬ 
cursive, separate visual images, which underwent various forms 
of alternation, which overlapped one another, etc., allowing 
various subjective interpolations. 21 

In the course of time a given vocal-motor-auditory image 
suffered far less impairment than did a visual image. But, on the 
other hand, the vocal-motor-auditory image was more likely to be 
excluded or inhibited altogether, or to be wrought into erroneous 
combinations or associations during a recall; for instance, the 
verbal images of colors suffered transposition. 22 And the likeli¬ 
hood of inhibition was probably greater in the earlier recalls, 
whereas later, at least with some observers, inhibition was less 
prevalent, the images having taken on a sort of mechanical 
functioning in a given sequence. 

According to Ballard (21), verses, which have been memorized, are re¬ 
called more completely after an interval of two days than immediately after 

21 Page 65 ff. 

22 This fact is intimately related with Watt’s conception of Aufgabe (199) 
and also with Ach’s conception of Aufgabe and determining tendencies (5). 
The tapping of a certain line of associations necessarily opens up a certain 
trend of images which in turn excludes certain other possible reproduc¬ 
tions; while, on the other hand, erroneous reproductions occur in a context 
due to the wrong mine being set off or the wrong string of associations 
being tapped or stimulated; resistance to the tapping of the wrong group 
of associations is slowly impaired in the course of time by forgetting. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


77 


learning. This phenomenon is called a “paradoxal reviviscence” by Huguenin 
( 77 ), who attempts to measure it in a quantitative fashion. Seventeen girls, 
whose ages ranged from eight to eleven and one-half years, served as ob¬ 
servers for Huguenin. Fifty-one lines of “la Fin du Monde,” by Aicard, 
were memorized and reproduced in writing immediately afterwards; other 
recalls of the same poem came after intervals of one, two, six, and eight 
weeks. Huguenin’s results, as follows,— 


Recall 

Am’t Retained 

No. of Errors 

Immediate 

54 

2.2 

After 1 wk. 

5-8 

4.2 

After 2 wks. 

6.2 

3-7 

After 6 wks. 

59 

3-2 

After 8 wks. 

6.0 

3-3 

that the greatest 

recall comes after a 

period of two weeks, but the 


amount of “reviviscence” is greater the younger the observer. Ballard has 
found that the recall of new parts of a poem (t. e., parts not recalled before) 
runs parallel with the forgetting of parts which had at one time been re¬ 
called by the reagent; but Huguenin failed to confirm this finding. How¬ 
ever, Huguenin did discover that the line of poetry which is newly revived 
after an interval of time is invariably a line which follows immediately after 
a line which had been recalled previously. Simultaneously with this process 
of “reviviscence” there is an increase in forgetting. Huguenin, like Cionci 
(38), believes that this phenomenon of “reviviscence” is due to distractions 
which were operative while the poetry was being memorized. Cionci, in his 
own investigation (38), found that there was an increase of forgetting with 
time, if the learning had been attentively done; but forgetting decreased 
with time, to a minimum from which it subsequently rose, if attention had 
been distracted while the material was being learned. 

We have found very little evidence in our investigation to confirm either 
Ballard or Huguenin; at the outset, we attempted a qualitative rather than 
a quantitative study, and the lack of quantitative data would, of itself, pre¬ 
vent us from confirming these investigators whose studies were by quantita¬ 
tive methods. But, notwithstanding our lack of quantitative data, we have 
found only slight evidence of any kind whatsoever to establish that our ob¬ 
servers recalled, after various intervals of delay, contents, items, and details 
of their learning materials which they had neglected to correctly recall im¬ 
mediately after learning; this statement does not touch those details which 
are subjectively and incorrectly inserted in the later recalls, but refers only 
to those correct contents which are supposed to have been absent in the im¬ 
mediate recall and to have been present after two days, in Ballard’s experi¬ 
ment, and two weeks, in Huguenin’s experiment. We are strongly inclined 
to agree with both Huguenin and Cionci that the distraction of attention 
during the act of learning would cause such phenomena as they have 
described, and, in fact, Ranschburg (156) has already pointed out that many 
forms of temporary and capricious forgetting are so caused. But every 
learning in our experiment was done with the most highly concentrated at¬ 
tention, and each learning continued for a period of only thirty seconds; 


78 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


these facts would account for our relative lack of the phenomena of revi- 
viscence. 

Later recalls showed a greater frequency of the total dropping 
out of whole vocal-motor-auditory images. This had its rise, in 
part at least, in the fact that in the early recalls certain details 
had been slurred over and certain other details had been em¬ 
phasized, while at the same time there had been a contrast of 
focal relations between the details, some having been unduly 
clear or persistent or emphasized and others having been only 
minimally clear and perhaps instable and short in duration. An¬ 
other factor contributing to the phenomenon of the total dropping 
out of vocal-motor-auditory images in the course of time was the 
tendency to inhibit one another which some details had under¬ 
gone in the earlier recalls. This factor also played an effective 
role in the observer’s logical procedures after forgetting had 
made some progress, and in his lack of subjective assurance. 
The phenomenon was very similar to that manifested in visual 
images, which, we saw, tended to dissolve, to become discursive 
and discrete in the course of time. But the fact that vocal-motor- 
auditory images are not simultaneous constellations but success¬ 
ive trains offered a greater opportunity for the dropping out of 
a whole image, while the fact that in the visual image several 
elements are organized into a single image provided a condition 
which was favorable to discursiveness. 

As forgetting progressed certain subsidiary and vicarious 
modes of representation made their appearance in the course of 
time and aided the vocal-motor-auditory images as means to 
recall. We have already mentioned such factors as hesitancy, 
emphasis, change of inflection, etc. In other factors, which 
we now discuss, the observers showed exceedingly great indi¬ 
vidual differences. As forgetting progressed, Observer P’s audi- 
tory-vocal-motor imagery tended more and more to be initiated 
by kinaesthetic factors,—by kinaesthesis of locating the material 
at the region where it had originally been presented, of localiz¬ 
ing the position within the group which had been occupied by 
certain features, or of estimating the total amount or size of the 
original material. These kinaesthetic factors usually included 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


79 


manual-motor images or actual innervations of pointing to the 
place of localization, of moving the hand and then pointing to 
represent size and location; oculo-motor images and actual in¬ 
nervations of movement and of location; and kinaesthesis of the 
head, neck and body, having to do with nodding, pointing, lean¬ 
ing, and the like. Observer T. also tended to initiate his longer- 
delayed recalls by the use of kinaesthetic processes. He was more 
addicted to the employment of eye kinaesthesis; but he had re¬ 
course also to manual and general bodily kinaesthesis, of locat¬ 
ing, pointing, drawing, and the like. In his later recalls, how¬ 
ever, this observer’s cues of localization and of estimating and 
remembering size also tended to be present in terms of visual 
imagery. These visual images were very schematic, vague, and 
evanescent; indeed, they were so schematic and fleeting that they 
furnished no information other than hazy indications as to size 
and localization. In the earlier recalls, Observers S. and W. 
had employed relatively small amounts of eye kinaesthesis with 
their visual images; and at this earlier stage, W. had possessed 
a great wealth of visual content and very little verbal, while N. 
had employed great quantities of verbal imagery in addition to an 
average amount of visual content. But, as forgetting progressed, 
both of these observers tended to employ in the course of time 
greater and greater amounts of eye kinaesthesis as aids to recall. 
In addition to the increased amount of eye kinaesthesis, as for¬ 
getting increased, Observer N. exhibited in the course of time also 
ever increasing amounts of manual-motor, head-motor, and gen¬ 
eral bodily kinaesthetic contents. In contrast to this profuse and 
ever increasing wealth of kinaesthetic content in the case of S., 
the kinaesthetic means of recall was in the case of W. limited al¬ 
most solely to eye kinaesthesis; but throughout the later recalls 
W. continued to employ large amounts of visual imagery for 
locating the position of certain details in the whole mass of details 
of a material and for estimating the approximate sizes of certain 
materials or certain details of a material. Observer B. was in 
the course of forgetting always prone to employ visual imagery 
in locating details and in estimating sizes of features. Not¬ 
withstanding this fact, however, she tended more and more in the 


8o 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


later recalls to experience eye kinaesthesis and general bodily 
kinaesthesis of fixating the place where the original presentation 
had been made, locating the position of certain details, and in 
initiating and re-enforcing her vocal-motor-auditory recalls. 
The later recalls of Observer 0 . were more and more, as time 
went on, characterized by the frequent kinaesthesis of nodding 
his head to denote a certain localization or a certain direction or 
shape of the features of a material. In addition to this form of 
kinaesthetic recall, Observer 0 . employed very frequently in the 
later reproductions kinaesthesis of eye-movements, of leaning 
his body in one direction or another to represent some form of 
the material, and of pointing his hand to localize certain posi¬ 
tions or directions of the details, and the like. He also employed 
the visual manner of locating, imaging the place where the orig¬ 
inal presentation had been made, and infrequently visualizing 
the locations of the details (here eye kinaesthesis and kinaes¬ 
thesis of head-movements became very frequent as forgetting 
progressed). His visual mode of localization tended to become 
more and more schematic and vague as time elapsed, and the 
kinaesthetic components of the recall increased in their frequency 
with the progress of forgetting. In an effort to initiate the 
recall, Observers Fs ., Fg., R., and H. tended always to visualize 
the locations of the materials, and in the course of forgetting, 
the recalls acquired to a large extent the modality of the vocal- 
motor-auditory image; and, thus, the visual image of the location 
of the material was the cue which initiated the verbal recall. But, 
as time elapsed, everyone of these observers employed greater 
amounts of kinaesthesis in locating features of a material and 
in estimating the approximate sizes of the details. They were, 
however, less prone to employ kinaesthesis in recalling than 
were other observers. 

This leads us then to a discussion of the effects of time and of 
forgetting on the kinaesthetic components of the earlier recalls 
and occurring at various places in the later recalls. 

c. Kinaesthetic Factors. Empathic experiences increased in 
the frequency of their occurrence with every observer in the 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


81 


course of the delayed recalls. This increase was very notice¬ 
able in the case of Observer F. Where the observers in earlier 
recalls had visualized the postures represented by the material, 
they tended more and more to represent those postures in kin- 
asthesis of their own bodies as time went on. This does not 
mean that empathic representations did not suffer qualitative 
changes in the course of forgetting and in the course of repeated 
delayed recalls. In fact, except for Observer F., this mode of 
recall suffered as much as, if not more than, the visual image. 
In the course of time, empathic recalls tended to occur much 
more spontaneously than was the case in the earlier recalls; 
fewer initiatory or antecedent processes, such as visual images 
and vocal-motor-auditory characterizations, were needed to set 
off the empathic recall. We may note at this point that Observer 
F., after visually perceiving a presented posture of the mannikin 
immediately in recalling made use of the empathic or kinaesthetic 
modes of representation. This phenomenon is exactly the re¬ 
verse of the well-known and commonplace fact that individuals, 
noting an object or a drawing in a kinaesthetic and tactual man¬ 
ner with eyes closed or blindfolded, usually tend to visualize the 
material rather than to represent or recall it in kinaesthetic and 
tactual images. The employment of tactual and kinaesthetic 
imagery in recalling the object in Series B i, which had been 
presented in a kinaesthetic and tactual manner, is well illustrated 
in the case of Observer F. Whereas, the employment of visual 
imagery to represent the same object is illustrated by Observer 0 . 
In the course of noting, Observer 0 . visualized the object, with 
now and then a kinaesthetic and tactual image very intimately 
fused with the visual; Observer F., on the other hand, noted 
the object in a purely kinaesthetic and tactual perceptual man¬ 
ner, and in the immediate recall and in recalls after various inter¬ 
vals of delay reproduced the object by means of kinaesthetic and 
tactual imagery. Observer 0 . always tended to visualize the 
object, although, as his visual imagery became more schematic 
and vague and more marked by discursive shifts of attention, 
the relative number of kinaesthetic and tactual images, as op¬ 
posed to visual images, increased as forgetting progressed. 


82 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


As indicated above, empathic imagery became more spon¬ 
taneous as time elapsed. It became more spontaneous in two 
respects. In the first place, it tended to initiate itself, so to speak, 
in greater frequency without initiatory cues, such as visual im¬ 
ages of the presented posture or some characterization in vocal- 
motor-auditory terms. This manner of appearing, however, 
was not characterized by excessive clearness of a focal sort or 
a very great degree of intensity; in other words, the appearing 
was not jerky or precipitous. In the second place, the empathic 
representation tended in time to take on a spontaneous character 
which manifested itself in two forms not altogether unrelated. 
The first of these may be termed a unified, facile, unconstrained 
form of empathic image; it was characterized by a somewhat 
diffused attention; and it appeared somewhat as a whole, and was 
free from sharp, discursive shifts of focality. The second aspect, 
closely related to the first in its ephemeral character, was a sort 
of continuous, constant instability or vacillation; this tendency 
to shift was quick and easy in appearing but was not character¬ 
ized by jerky or precipitous breaks; in fact, just the character of 
unbrokenness, characterizing its vacillation, and the ease and 
quickness attending the shifting, are the principal aspects of its 
spontaneity and of its ephemeralness. In the early recalls, par¬ 
ticularly in the immediate recall, a high degree of fusion, or of 
simultaneity, characterized the appearance of the empathic at¬ 
titude with the focal visual image of the presented posture. The 
observer was intently visualizing, for instance, an arm of the 
mannikin extended in gesture, while at the same time he ex¬ 
perienced empathic images of being himself in the same posture. 
As forgetting set in, the visual images (or verbal characteriza¬ 
tions) tended more to precede the empathic attitude in a success¬ 
ive fashion. In this case, the empathic experience was very 
focal; it was perhaps more focal than the visual image or verbal 
process which had preceded it. But in the longer delayed recalls, 
as already stated, the empathic attitude tended to occur spon¬ 
taneously without the intercession of cues; and then simultane¬ 
ously with, and following the empathic attitude, the observer 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


83 


tended to visualize his own body, or parts of his own body, in 
the posture represented. This process of visualizing was closely 
connected with increased focality of local kinaesthesis incident to 
actual innervation of some parts of the body. This state of 
affairs resembled to some extent the process by means of which 
visual images were dissolved and became discrete. But it also 
showed that the kinaesthetic complex, although undergoing dis¬ 
integration to a certain extent, tended to become more reflex 
in its constituent parts,—for instance, the detail of bending an arm 
was represented more mechanically, the arm being actually bent 
by the observer; and the kinaesthetic and tactual sensations there¬ 
from were very focal in consciousness. On the other hand, a 
constituent part of the original total empathic attitude, in time, 
decreased in the extent of the area, or of the number and the 
definite localization of the muscles, involved. This was at least 
one aspect of the increase in unitariness and of the gradual ac¬ 
quisition of an ephemeralness characterizing the empathic at¬ 
titude in the course of time. After very long periods of delay 
the kinaesthetic attitudes of empathy had attained a very 
schematic and evanescent character. Now they occurred suc¬ 
cessively and in discrete fashion; they were little characterized 
by continuity,—sharp, jerky shifts of focality separated them; 
and frequent shifts, alternations, and fluctuations occurred in 
them, bringing to the observer uncertainty, hesitation, etc.;— 
in the course of forgetting even the empathic mode of recall is 
found to have broken down in its efficacy. 

The recalls after long periods of delay included such kinaes¬ 
thetic components as eye-movements and general bodily kinaes¬ 
thesis of leaning, pointing, nodding, and the like. These kinaes¬ 
thetic components became more and more prominent, absolutely 
and relatively, and of greater importance, as forgetting increased. 
Locality, direction, shape, and size were very largely represented 
by means of kinaesthesis by all observers; by visualizers, in cases 
where their visual images had suffered in extent, in intensity, in 
clearness, in distinctness, and in unitariness; by the less visual 
observers, at all times, but particularly when the verbal represen- 


84 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


tations broke clown or failed to represent the above-mentioned 
details. Usually some kinaesthetic process, actually innervated 
in company with visual perception itself, or imaged (alone or 
with a visual image), initiated a recall. We have already char¬ 
acterized the “learning attitude” which had attended the noting 
or learning experience; and we have seen that there was a typical 
“recall attitude.” The former usually attended a recall, and was 
the most important means of initiating that recall, of obtaining 
the correct material from the whole group of materials employed, 
and of locating the whole datum or certain details of it. And, 
when this attitude did not occur, the “recall attitude” made its 
appearance. If neither occurred, a recall was most often im¬ 
possible to initiate,—the observer failed to get started. 

Pillsbury’s statement (153, p. 144 f.) that “what is recalled at any moment 
depends upon the idea that was in mind just before, and upon the mental 
attitude of that time—the general setting that gives the particular association 
its direction” is substantially correct. Many people recognize the fact that 
oftentimes it is necessary for them to “get back into the learning situation”— 
that it is necessary for them to recall the circumstances which attended the 
original learning experience if they are to remember correctly a given datum 
of experience. The effect of the “learning attitude” upon acts of remember¬ 
ing was recognized by Aristotle who put the matter in this fashion (16, p. 
206) : “When a person wants to recall a thing, he will do the following: he 
will try to gain a starting-point in the process, in sequence to which the 
desired experience was had. Consequently, recollections which are awakened 
from the starting-point are most quickly and best effected.” Aristotle was 
also familiar with the functioning of the “recall attitude,” for he says (16, 
p. 206) that “oftentimes one is unable to recollect a thing, but after searching 
succeeds in finding it. This seeking and finding is what happens when one 
awakens a number of experiences and continues to do so until one sets that 
particular experience in motion upon which the desired thing is attendant.” 
In more recent times, namely 1913 and 1914, Miiller-Freienfels (125, 126, 
127, and 128) and Gallinger (64) have emphasized the importance of such 
attitudes, as above described, in acts of remembering. 

Pillsbury says that what attitude one shall take and what turn there shall 
be in the course of one’s associations are dependent upon the function of at¬ 
tention. In a like manner, Sybel states (177, p. 287 ff.) that in forgetting 
it sometimes happens that the visual image is subject to variation in its mag¬ 
nitude, presumably in consequence of the distribution of attention. Of both 
Pillsbury and Sybel we are constrained to ask, what determines what shall be 
the functioning and the distribution of attention in successive recalls of the 
same material after various lapses of time? This question will find, we hope, 
a thorough answer in this paper; we believe that we have discovered that the 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


85 


degree and the quality of forgetting are at least in part responsible for the 
different modes of functioning and the distribution of attention during acts 
of recall. This fact we try to drive home throughout the course of this paper 
but particularly in Section III B iv c and d, page 113 ff. Stout’s statement 
(173, I., p. 194, and II., pp. 3 and 140), although making attention exhibit a 
traditional dynamic valence, and failing to show from what source attention 
obtains the controlling force which it is supposed to exercise, can be made 
to correlate with the view that we here present; his statement is substantially 
as follows: the process of attention shows an inhibitive aspect in that it is 
a unified process that excludes everything which does not belong to the par¬ 
ticular system of ideas which holds the attention at any one time. Each 
mode of the mental process tends to arrest and suppress all others, and is 
successful in proportion to its intensity and systematic complexity. There 
is a very compact resistance offered by a highly complex group of processes 
in systematic union and effective co-operation. This statement leads us to 
ask, on what do “intensity,” “systematic complexity,” and “effective co-opera¬ 
tion” of associations depend? Our data would force us to this answer,—in 
part upon the degree and the kind of forgetting which has taken place. If 
we succeed in showing that forgetting is a cumulative function which hinders 
or facilitates progressively more forgetting in circular fashion, we shall 
have added to a long list by Meumann (115) another factor which con¬ 
tributes to the establishment, the operation, and the decay of associations. 

The “learning attitude,” which we mentioned on page 84, 
consisted, in its kinaesthetic components, of modes of fixation and 
of localization,—for instance, to the curtain (in Series V with 
the mannikin) or in that direction,—to the shutter (in Series I, 
Cl, II, and HI),—to the top of the table (in Series IV), and to 
the experimenter’s table (in Series BI). On the other hand, the 
“recall attitude” consisted to a great extent in kinaesthesis of 
frowning, closing and straining the eyes, eye-fixations here and 
there in trial recalls, general bodily strains and tensions, etc.,— 
all characteristic of effort and of activity. The frequency, the 
priority, and the importance of these attitudes in the observer’s 
getting started on the right track to recall, showed very well the 
significant role of kinaesthesis in recalls and in an observer’s re¬ 
sistance 23 to forgetting. 

23 We venture to suggest that if Abramowski’s (2, 3, and 4) “generic feel¬ 
ing” had been submitted to closer introspective analyses, complexes containing 
in large part kinaesthetic factors would have been found, and even other 
factors not at all in the nature of pleasantness or unpleasantness, as modes 
of resistance to forgetting. In fact, Betz (26, /.), who once smiled at seeing 
a man drop a lighted cigar on the floor of a crowded street-car, was, after 
the lapse of several days, enabled to recognize this same man because, upon 


86 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


Besides the forms of kinaesthesis so far discussed, another 
general class, somewhat similar in nature to the “recall attitude,” 
functioned more especially in regard to acceptance and rejection 
of a datum as correct or as incorrect. This sort of kinaesthesis 
was in the nature of general or particular bodily tensions and 
strains, on the one hand; and of relaxations from, or decrease in, 
the tensions and strains, or their total absence (i. e. a passive or 
composure attitude ), on the other hand. This phenomenon en¬ 
tered as one of the factors attending the processes of logical 
memory, and we shall have more to say of it in another section 
of this paper. It was a highly significant process, and increased 
in the frequency of its occurrence as forgetting progressed. 
Chiefly points of difficulty, and points where a difficulty was 
solved or could not be solved in the recalling of a whole material 
or certain details of a material, were characterized by the process 
in question. Needless to say, as forgetting went on and 
fewer data of memory were recalled and the associations became 
progressively weaker, the process functioned at incorrect points, 
or functioned incorrectly, thus permitting subjective alterations 
and constructions; this phenomenon is quite in line with what 
we have seen of forgetting thus far,— there is resistance, by 
means of various logical procedures, to forgetting, but in time 
they too become less and less valuable and increase in their in¬ 
accuracy. 

In general, as to the kinaesthetic modes of recall, we may 
say that, except for the empathic attitudes and perhaps eye kin¬ 
aesthesis of localization, the kinaesthesis only roughly and gen¬ 
erally represented the original material and its details; such re¬ 
calls were schematic and not very accurate at best, and not very 
minute in extent. Fine and minute points of localization, direc¬ 
tion, size, shape, etc., were only roughly indicated through kinaes¬ 
thesis. The finer points of detail, such as those just mentioned, 
were more accurately carried by visual imagery (if the observer 

seeing the man again, Betz reflexly began to smile before he realized who 
the man was; Betz immediately introspectively described his recognition- 
consciousness and found it to be composed largely of the kinaesthesis of 
smiling. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


8 7 


was prone to employ visual imagery) and by vocal-motor-audi- 
tory descriptive processes. But the curious phenomenon is that 
the kinaesthetic modes of recall suffered least in the course of 
forgetting, and were, on the whole, the last processes to be af¬ 
fected even to a slightly deleterious extent. 24 The kinaesthetic 
processes followed the same tendencies of deterioration as the 
empathic attitude in the course of time. The effects of forget¬ 
ting, however, were less noticeable. The empathic experience 
was characterized by a sort of fused or organized or unitary 
complex of kinaesthetic elements; and, in view of its well-knit, 
organized character, it resembled the visual image. And, natur¬ 
ally, an organization or a complex of many elements, not dis¬ 
crete in character, was most likely to disintegrate and to permit 
of fluctuations and alterations and dropping-outs in great variety. 
But the effects of forgetting upon the simpler kinaesthetic com¬ 
ponents, such for instance as the kinaesthetic factors of localiza¬ 
tion, direction, shape, size, and the like, were much smaller than 
the effects of forgetting upon the larger complexes of kinaes- 
thesis. These simpler kinaesthetic components in the course of 
time lost details as wholes, which dropped out of the retained 
content, much in the same manner in which a train of vocal- 
motor-auditory images loses certain of its members; but the fre¬ 
quency of this phenomenon was least with the kinaesthetic 
factors of a recall. A much more pronounced effect of forget¬ 
ting was exhibited in the tendency of the simpler kinaesthetic 
images to alternate and to fluctuate, on the one hand, and to be¬ 
come more general and roughly indicative of the position and 
forms represented, on the other hand. The latter phenomenon, 
namely the general obscuration of the simpler kinaesthetic con¬ 
tents, was much less frequent and much less intense than the 

24 Finzi (56) reports that visual imagery is less subject to falsification of 
content, but shows more errors of position. Our results exactly reverse the 
former statement, if increased periods of delay are taken into account. In 
the earlier recalls (immediate and recalls after short delays), the visual 
image furnished the most accurate and minute details of position, form, and 
localization; but in the course of time and with forgetting, the kinaesthetic 
manner of locating perhaps surpassed the visual in the correctness of 
position. 


88 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


phenomenon of the alternation and fluctuation of the simpler 
kinaesthetic components of a recall. 

The tendency to oscillate was closely related to the increased 
slowness and hesitancy characterizing this particular class of 
kinaesthetic processes after longer periods of delay. The ten¬ 
dency to become slightly less accurate and definite may have been 
intimately connected with a slight decrease of intensity and with 
that sort of schematic ephemeralness which we attempted to 
describe in discussing the empathic experiences. In the earlier 
recalls, the observer (except in the case of Observer F. and per¬ 
haps Observer T .) attended very little to such kinaesthetic factors 
as aids; but, in the later recalls, he paid close attention to such 
aiding processes, which now were not so clear as they had been 
originally. 

d. Affection. As already stated, the original noting of the 
material was, in most cases, not attended by pleasantness or un¬ 
pleasantness. In some cases, the difficulty of understanding or 
perceiving the material was accompanied by unpleasantness and 
the ease and quickness of perceiving and understanding the ma¬ 
terial were attended by pleasantness. Emotional complexes were 
sometimes present, though infrequently; they consisted of atti¬ 
tudes of surprise, amusement, excitement, wonder, awe, dismay, 
delight, disappointment and disgust. Of this whole list, only the 
attitudes of amusement and of disgust recurred in some of the 
earlier recalls, and this recurrence was very infrequent, the recalls 
after one or two weeks showing no traces of them. The ex¬ 
periences of pleasantness or unpleasantness, present during the 
presentation of the material, tended to disappear at once; the 
immediate and the delayed recalls showed no traces of the original 
occurrence of affection. In fact, there was no discoverable cor¬ 
relation between presence of affection in learning and accuracy 
and correctness of recalling. 25 And, in the delayed recalls, the 

25 This fact fails to confirm Tait (179), who holds that learning materials 
attended with pleasantness are better remembered than those attended with 
unpleasantness, and that both are better remembered than indifferent im¬ 
pressions. Moreover, we have no guarantee that Tait’s observers really ex¬ 
perienced the feelings which the word-stimuli were expected to arouse. Our 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


89 


increasing frequency of unpleasantness especially and to a certain 
extent the relative increase of pleasantness, were great. Affec¬ 
tion seemed to occur only at points of success or failure to re¬ 
call. 26 The appearing of any datum, whether correct or incor¬ 
rect, just at the moment when the observer’s efforts to recall 
were most active, contributed to the feeling of pleasantness; this 
occurred very frequently and most frequently after forgetting 
had made an extensive headway. The failure of the observer 
to “get started” upon a recall, or his failure to remember any 
datum in a recall, usually contributed to the feeling of unpleasant¬ 
ness, and this experience of unpleasantness was the more in¬ 
tensive the greater the observer’s efforts in attempting to recall. 
Affection, in this light, appeared only as an indicative or inci¬ 
dental factor in the successs or failure of the observer to recall 
something; indeed, the affection seemed to follow in a great many 
instances after the observer’s attempts to recall, or, at least, to 
conclude the attempts to recall; the affective experience never 
preceded the efforts of the observer to recall and only at rare in¬ 
tervals did it appear simultaneously with the efforts to recall. 
Pleasantness does not, therefore, appear to play the role of 
“stamping-in” impressions, nor does unpleasantness appear to 
function to “stamp-out” impressions. 

Thorndike (181 and 183) advocates a view that “satisfyingnesspresumably 
meaning pleasantness, functions to stamp in neural connections when a suc¬ 
cessful act is consummated by the reagent;—and that “unsatisfyingness,” pre¬ 
sumably meaning unpleasantness, functions to stamp out, or to obliterate, 
neural connections when the reagent’s acts lead to failure. Data presented 
by Watson (198), and data accumulated in our own investigation, would 
tend to support a view almost the inverse of that of Thorndike—a view 
namely that “stamping-in” produces, or contributes to, pleasantness, and 
that “stamping-out,” or obliteration, produces, or contributes to, unpleasant- 

findings are more in agreement with those of Gordon (68), who required her 
observers to introspectively report the occurrence of feelings when they 
were learning and recalling colors and forms. And Gordon has shown 
that the results obtained by Colegrove (42) and Kowalewski (86), namely 
that pleasant experiences are better remembered than unpleasant events, is 
altogether a different matter from asserting that pleasantness contributes to 
“stamping-in” or to the strengthening of retention, and that unpleasant¬ 
ness exercises a “stamping-out” or an obliviscent function. 

26 See Clark’s discussion of a similar point (41, p. 481). 



90 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


ness. Moreover, “stamping-in” is not always accompanied by pleasantness, 
nor is “stamping-out” always attended by unpleasantness, if success be a 
criterion of “stamping-in” and failure a criterion of “stamping-out.” This 
latter fact would seem to lend weight to the view that the affective process is 
incidental in character. One rather wonders why Thorndike, of all psycholo¬ 
gists, should ascribe to such intangible and immaterial processes of conscious¬ 
ness as the affections the physical power of “stamping-in” and “stamping- 
out” neural connections;—it is well known and generally accepted that the 
affections are extremely evanescent, intangible, and elusive, and immaterial 
processes of consciousness, and that they forbid being the direct objects of 
attention, besides being frequently absent when one’s acts are either suc¬ 
cessful or unsuccessful. Thorndike (182) has been squarely opposed to the 
hypothesis known as the “ideo-motor” theory of voluntary action,—that such 
immaterial, intangible, evanescent, phenomena as “ideas,” or images, serve 
to initiate, or to be connected in sequential fashion with movements of 
muscles. And, yet, it is almost universally conceded that affective phenomena 
are much more incorporeal, evanescent, immaterial, and elusive than images, 
ideas, and sensations. It is to these “psychical ghosts” of the affections that 
Thorndike has attributed such wonderful physical powers of “stamping-in” 
and obliterating connections in the human nervous system. And we are not 
alone in taking issue with Thorndike here. Peterson, a psychologist of strong 
behavioristic leanings, refuses (143, p. 159 f.) to follow Thorndike in regard 
to the role of the feelings or affections, in the acquisition of correct move¬ 
ments, and maintains that pleasantness is merely an indication that a certain 
response is “relatively complete, unimpeded” and “harmonious with one’s in¬ 
herited and acquired organization” of associations (with one’s “apperceptive 
mass” in the terminology of a follower of Wundt). 

The state of affairs would appear to be more the reverse of that 
suggested by Thorndike,—namely, that pleasantness were pro¬ 
duced by and indicated the implanting or the establishment of 
associations,—that pleasantness were essentially a process of 
congruity or facilitation ; 27 and that unpleasantness were pro- 

27 See Pieron’s (149) conjecture that the feelings of comprehension and 
of familiarity may be sensations resulting from facilitation of cerebral func¬ 
tioning and that feelings of unfamiliarity and of obscurity may be sensa¬ 
tions resulting from the inhibition of cerebral functioning. In this connec¬ 
tion see also Herbart’s discussion (73 and 48) of the facility with which 
ideas and images course through consciousness and the relationship existing 
between facile and impeded associations and the affections. The writer 
of this thesis has no apologies to make to Herbart and the Herbartians, 
since at the time of the reaching of our conclusions and the preparation of 
this paper we had forgotten just what were Herbart’s contentions in regard 
to the affections; after the writing of this paper our attention has been called 
to the fact that our view is similar to that of Herbart, and, moreover, that 
this view has lately been taken over by some psychiatrists. If we owe 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


9i 


duced by and indicated lack of adjustment or the breaking of 
associations,—that unpleasantness were essentially a process of 
incongruity or of an impediment to facilitation. But this hypo¬ 
thesis cannot always be rigorously applied throughout the delayed 
recalls, for, in case it were always correct, the more accurate 
recalls should be accompanied with pleasantness, and the more 
inaccurate recalls with unpleasantness, at least in the earlier of the 
delayed recalls. Usually just such a state of affairs did not occur; 
the complete disappearance of affection, at least during the inter¬ 
val succeeding the learning and preceding the immediate recall, 
was quite pronounced. And this latter fact seems to add weight 
to the hypothesis that affection is only an incidental factor. 
Pleasantness or unpleasantness practically never once ushered a 
recall into consciousness. And, as forgetting increased in its 
extent, not a single case was reported in which pleasantness or 
unpleasantness constituted the sole remaining content of memory, 
or constituted the only residuum left behind by the process of 
forgetting . 28 In this connection, however, it is to be borne in 

apologies to anyone, it is to Wundt; but it is our belief that our view 

came from our own introspections and the introspections of our observers, 

and was not in any degree influenced by the Wundtian gospel of apper¬ 

ception. 

28 Abramowski (2, 3, and 4) contends that forgetting and the consequent 
filling of the lacunae of memory by false data, or by misplaced data, is 
actively resisted by the operation of a feeling. This feeling he terms a 
“generic feeling,”—for, in the original imprinting of a datum, a feeling is 
aroused by the impression, and this feeling fuses with the impression to con¬ 
stitute a perception. The original, or “generic,” feeling belongs to that par¬ 
ticular datum of impression by which it was at first aroused, or, rather, the 
datum belongs to or with its original or “generic” feeling. In the course of 
time, as forgetting progresses, the particular datum of memory is lost, but 
its “generic” feeling is never lost: “Objekt vergeht, Affekt besteht” (203, p. 
151) ; it continues to exert an influence against forgetting,—it fails to fuse 
with an incorrect or false datum,—thus it resists forgetting. If this view 
conceives of the “generic feeling” as pleasantness-unpleasantness, our results 
fail to substantiate Abramowski; but if the term covers motor, organic and 
affective factors, together with the ocurrence of certain attitudes, and the 
changing qualitative process aspects of mental contents, such for instance 
as temporal relations of rapidity and slowness, clearness relations and their 
changes, spontaneity and hesitancy, durability and instability, etc.—if the 
term is a general one, covering such phenomena, we shall have more to 
say in another section to substantiate Abramowski’s claim. 


92 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


mind that the observers were working under the Aufgabe to 
recall, 29 and hence the recalls were of the voluntary kind; and the 
fact that learning and recall attitudes, particularly the latter, may 
initiate a recall indicates that the Aufgabe was operative and that 
the observer voluntarily exerted efforts to recall. The facilita¬ 
tion of these efforts to recall would lead to pleasantness, no mat¬ 
ter what the correctness of the recalled contents might be, and 
the failure of these efforts would lead to unpleasantness. 

Pleasantness and unpleasantness manifested almost every pos¬ 
sible relation with kinaesthesis of strains and tensions, and with 
increase and decrease of the extensity and of the intensity of 
strains and tensions. A feeling of pleasantness accompanied a 
total relaxation of strains and frequently attended merely 
a decrease of strains. At times the observer reported a 
feeling of pleasantness but no kinaesthesis whatever. And 
at still other times the observer reported that a feeling of 
pleasantness was accompanied by an increase of strains. On 
the other hand, the observer frequently experienced unpleasant¬ 
ness and no kinaesthesis whatever; and sometimes he reported 
that a feeling of unpleasantness was accompanied by a total 
relaxation of or merely a decrease in strains. And very fre¬ 
quently the feeling of unpleasantness was attended by an in¬ 
crease in strains. Moreover, strains and tensions, sometimes in¬ 
creasing and sometimes decreasing in intensity, were unattended 
by the feeling of pleasantness or of unpleasantness, and very 
frequently a total relaxation of strains or an experience of pas¬ 
sivity was reported by the observer with no mention of either 
pleasantness or unpleasantness. All of these possible relations 
between affections and kinaesthesis were exemplified by every 
observer. In general, however, unpleasantness most frequently 
occurred in conjunction with kinaesthesis of strains and ten¬ 
sions, while pleasantness occurred most frequently in conjunc¬ 
tion with a decrease or a total relaxation of strains and with what 
may be called a “passive attitude” or an “attitude of composure.” 
The conjunction of pleasantness with strains, and of unpleasant- 

29 See Clark’s treatment of this point (41, p. 481). 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


93 


ness with a decrease of strains, sometimes regarded as unusual 
phenomena by adherents to the James-Lange view of affection 
and by more recent “behaviorists,” is well shown by the fol¬ 
lowing introspections from Observer F .: 

Obs. F. Series II 2. Delayed Recall, after 89 days. January 17, 1916. 
“In the foreperiod, there were the usual strains. I then perceived visually that 
the experimenter was procuring a sheet of paper; vocal-motor ‘that army 
thing’; then auditory perception of the stimulus, with pleasantness and a 
slight increase of strains.” 

Obs. F. Series II 3. Delayed Recall, after 356 days. January 10, 1916. 
“In completing my recall, I experienced in vocal-motor images the Aufgabe, 
‘guess that’s all’; then there was a relaxation of strains and a slight decrease 
of unpleasantness; the unpleasantness continued for a while after the re¬ 
laxation of strains.” 

As forgetting increased, affection played a more and more 
significant role in experiences of certainty and uncertainty, and 
of acceptance and rejection. In the earlier recalls it played an 
important part in certain attitudes. These two groups of 
phenomena, and the part played by affection in them will occupy 
our attention in another section of this paper (p. 113 ff.). 

iv. Conscious Processes and Procedures Involved in 
Logical Memory 

The discussion thus far has unavoidably anticipated certain 
results which belong under the above rubric. In the present 
section we shall discuss such topics as attitudes of conscious¬ 
ness (Bewusstseinslagen) , subjective interpolations, acceptance 
and rejection, the differences existing between recall-associations 
and extraneous associations, and subjective assurance and lack 
of assurance. This list contains a comprehensive group of for¬ 
midable topics; and one might object to their treatment in a 
paper of this length, claiming that these topics are side-issues to 
our main problem, and that they should merit treatment in a sup¬ 
plementary paper. They are procedures or factors of recall 
employed by every observer in his attempts to remember and in his 
attempts to resist forgetting. For this reason, if for no other 
reason, they deserve treatment in the body of this paper on an 
analysis of forgetting. Moreover, each and every one of these 


94 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


processes suffered from the effects of forgetting, and indicated 
changes wrought by forgetting and by the lapse of time. In the 
third place, they occupy in their own right substantial places in 
what is known as one’s logical memory and in one’s attempts to 
logically recall and then to unravel the truly learned material 
from the spuriously and subjectively interpolated associative 
material. Lastly, and most important of all, attitudes of con¬ 
sciousness are largely the functional, process aspects of contents, 
a subject woefuly neglected in psychology, especially in the psy¬ 
chology of memory and forgetting, and a subject to which the 
Wurzburg psychologists and the imageless-thought psychologists 
have done great violence; it is our intention to show in this paper 
that such phenomena as clearness and variations in clearness, 
fluctuations of contents, spontaneity of the appearing of con¬ 
tents, suddenness and jerkiness manifested in the coursing of 
contents through consciousness, slowness and a vacillating aspect 
of contents, the failure of contents to appear at all, their departure 
to return no more, variations in the intensity of contents, and 
spatial aspects of contents, are all the process, functional aspects 
of consciousness which play such tremendous and such weighty 
roles in memory, in forgetting, and in the logical efforts of the 
observer to weed the chaff out of his recalled contents. 

Our treatment of these topics will adhere as closely as it is 
possible for us to make it adhere to the very words contained 
in the observer’s introspections. The following excerpts from the 
original introspections will serve to introduce us to this most 
slighted field: 

a. Attitudes of Consciousness ( Bewusstseinslagen ) 

Surprise 

Obs. B. Series II 3. Presented November 17, 1915. “Upon the presenta¬ 
tion of the material, my visual perception was general and indefinite, and 
contained no more than a mass of colors; then a sudden kinaesthesis of 
raising my head, shoulders, arms, and back, with tension in my throat and 
vocal apparatus; incipient vocal-motor-auditory image of ‘Uh!’; slight kin¬ 
aesthesis of my eyelids narrowing as if a light were flashed in my eyes; 
unpleasantness; all this meant surprise.” 

Obs. F. Series II 3. Presented January 19, 1915. “In the foreperiod, 
upon the ‘ready’ signal, breathing was inhibited; I experienced strains in chest. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


95 


neck, and jaw; highly concentrated visual attention on the shutter. With the 
presentation came a general, indefinite, visual perception; strains increased; 
unpleasantness came in very rapidly, and vocal-motor ‘Gee! is it possible?’; 
then a casual examination of the material.” 

Obs. Fg. Series II 3. Presented January 18, 1916. “When the material 
was presented, I visually perceived the masses of color and form in a gen¬ 
eral fashion; there was a sudden arrest of breathing and a vocal-motor 
‘My! what have we here ?’; eye-fixation moved around over the material 
slowly.” 

Obs. Fs. Series IV 1. Delayed Recall, after 107 days. March 12,1915. “Had 
been anticipating ‘An Orator’ in auditory imagery and in perceiving peripher¬ 
ally the green curtain; then focal attention was on the shutter. When the 
experimenter announced the stimulus (‘Transmigration’), 30 there was a very 
focal auditory perception of ‘Trans—and before the experimenter finished 
the word, I was aware of a slight muscular rigidity all over my body and 
a holding of the posture; then there was practically a blank period in which 
only the word ‘Transmigration’ rang in auditory imagery of the experi¬ 
menter’s voice; only a dim awareness of the experimental surroundings; 
this was a state of being slightly dazed, and it lasted until visual attention 
turned to the place where the material had been presented.” 

Obs. O. Series II 2. Delayed Recall, after 49 days. December 9, 1915. 
While drawing a certain detail, the observer was surprised at the rapid 
appearance of another detail in visual imagery. “This latter detail was very 
focal and sudden; there were strains in my neck, and my breathing was in¬ 
hibited ; then a vocal-motor ‘strange that it didn’t come in before.’ ” 

Obs. R. Series III 1. Delayed Recall, after 14 days. March 15, 1915. “I 
didn’t expect the instructions so soon; tensed state came when the experi¬ 
menter said, ‘I want you to recall—’; I had been passive before that; vocal- 
motor ‘here comes the assignment!’ The sudden tension and quick attitude 
to listen to the stimulus (a turning of my ear to the experimenter and the 
focality of the sounds) were my experience of surprise.” 

Obs. T. Series I 1. Presented April 1, 1915. “Had been visualizing the 
color circle material; was restless, with inhibited breathing and unpleasant¬ 
ness. On the presentation, with the first general vague visual perception, 
my whole body was drawn back, and my breath was drawn in; I do not 
recall any unpleasantness, but I had vocal-motor ‘Well, that’ll be difficult to 
describe!’; a drawing back and a shaking of my head.” 

Obs. W. Series I 1. Presented November 14, 1914. “Immediately on the 
presentation I experienced surprise; a sudden and rapidly increasing tension 
in shoulders and face; there was a focal perception of the material as foot- 

30 This material was a selection of philosophical prose treating the doc¬ 
trine of transmigration as taught by the Pythagoreans and opposed by Aris¬ 
totle (see footnote, p. 109). In the recalls the experimenter in oral fashion 
gave instructions for the observer to recall “Transmigration.” 


96 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


ball; my line of regard suddenly moved to the football player's right leg, to 
his sweater, and to his trousers; then there was a sudden definite and clear 
auditory-vocal-motor ‘football.’ ” 

Disappointment 

Obs. O. Series II 3. Delayed Recall, after 95 days. March 12, 1915* “In 
recalling a quadrant of the colored circle, vocal-motor-auditory imagery of 
‘yellow’ came immediately, but nothing came in the visual image; kinaes- 
thesis of eyes up to upper right quadrant; this was a very clear white blank 
and nothing came to fill it; here I experienced disappointment, unpleasant¬ 
ness, close attention to the visual image, deep inhibition of breathing, frown¬ 
ing with strains around my eyes, forehead, and face, and vocal-motor- 
auditory ‘I thought I knew this one—did not know the last quadrant.’ ” 

Amusement 

Obs. Fs. Series III 1. Presented April 17, 1915. “With the presentation, 
I caught sight of the four persons (‘Bringing-Up Father’) and immediately 
there was a clear emotional reaction of amusement; instead of focusing on 
the pictures and trying to learn them, I was aware of large parts of the 
material all at once with no details present, and attention did not remain 
at any place very long; visual perception was not clear and there was no 
concentration of attention; focal set of kinaesthesis, of smiling and of turn¬ 
ing to the experimenter as if wanting him to look at the material; raise 
of eyebrows and squinting in smiling; slow inhibited breathing; and pleas¬ 
antness.” 

Obs. R. Series III 1. Presented March 1, 1915. “When the experimenter 
raised the shutter, there was an instant before the pictures were clearly per¬ 
ceived ; then a becoming clear of the pictures in visual perception; and a 
visual perceptual and vocal-motor reading of the caption; smiled at the 
name ‘Rubes de Gink’; vocal-motor ‘Hotel de Gink’; pleasantness and a re¬ 
laxation of general bodily tonus.” 

Obs. T. Series III 2. Presented October 14, 1915. “Visual attention was 
fixated on the white card at the top (caption card bearing a heart, a diamond, 
a spade, and a club), with successive fixations on the heart and the diamond, 
and vocal-motor-auditory naming at each place; the same sort of procedure 
for the spade, the club, and the title ‘Poker Shark.’ This procedure went 
on easily without any hold-up of attention, and there was pleasantness. 
Background caught attention, and then attention shifted below, my eyes 
going over the picture at random, stopping at different details; there came 
in strains in speech organs and a restlessness and eye-movements; the strain 
increased; and then suddenly vocal-motor-auditory ‘Van Loon!—Pa Van 
Loon!’ with pleasantness and a facial expression of humor (wrinkling of 
face and squinting of eyes, with a smile).” 

Obs. W. Series I 1. Presented November 14, 1914. “After visually per¬ 
ceiving the football player who seemed to have three legs (another football 
player was behind the larger one giving the appearance perhaps of three 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


97 


legs), I had a visual image of a football player with three legs on the field; 
visual images of biological sports; pleasantness; actual kinaesthesis of 
smiling and a rhythmical, periodic contracting of my chest muscles.” 

Excitement 

Obs. F. Series I I. Immediate Recall. November 17, 1914. “The em- 
pathic kinaesthetic imagery of feeling myself kicking was very intense and 
clear, and there was great pleasantness. Besides the actual kinaesthesis here 
involved and its intensity and its great clearness and an experience of 
pleasantness, there were the factors of concentrated kinaesthetic attention, 
inhibited breathing, and a release of the general bodily kinaesthesis not 
definitely located;—all these constituted a feeling of excitement.” 

Obs. Fs. Series V 1. Delayed Recall, after 7 days. January 13, 1915. 
“In the foreperiod there was an auditory perception of the instructions ‘to 
attend to my first conscious process’; after this, the clearness relations of 
visual perception shifted to the visible parts of my own body, and to a kin¬ 
aesthetic awareness of my bodily position; slight increasing tenseness; all of 
which processes seemed to constitute an experience of excitement of having 
something to do.” 

Obs. O. Series V 2. Delayed Recall, after 38 days. June 7, 1915- “After 
perceiving the stimulus to recall, ‘Gym’ (mannikin posture), I experienced 
kinaesthesis of moving my head toward the curtain; then came an indefinite 
visual image of a brownish figure; continued vocal-motor-auditory ‘Gym’; 
gradually the visualized brown figure took the position of the ‘Gym’ statue 
over in the corner where it had been presented; vocal-motor-auditory ‘O, 
yes 1—j remember it now!’; accelerated breathing and an organaesthesis of a 
rising and a falling of my internal organs.” 

Obs . T. Series I 1. Delayed Recall, after 305 days. January 31, 1916. 
After the stimulus to recall ‘Kick-Off,’ the observer had a veritable play 
of visual images, which were schematic, vague and non-intensive and con¬ 
tained very few details. “Finally one of the visual images began to persist; 
it stayed; and throughout this whole experience, from the stimulus to this 
persistent visual image, there was a bodily attitude of excitement, consist¬ 
ing chiefly in a trembling and a restlessness in my legs, although the shifting 
of the visual images played a part in the excitement.” 

Obs. W. Series I 1. Presented November 14, 1914. “An empathic ex¬ 
perience of watching a football game; this experience consisted of faint 
kinaesthesis and organaesthesis in the region of my diaphragm, and of in¬ 
creasing pressure in my chest extending toward the throat. Visually per¬ 
ceiving the player’s right leg in the air, I experienced a kinaesthetic image of 
myself kicking a football; this was intense but short-lived; the organic, kin¬ 
aesthetic, respiratory and circulatory factors made up my excitement.” 

Delight 

Obs. Fs. Series V 1. Delayed Recall, after 7 days. January 13, 19*5- 
“Suddenly there came a very distinct visual image of a table on which ‘An 


98 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


Orator’ stood with the caption-card tacked to the front of the table; a 
sudden intake of breath; a tendency to smile; and pleasantness;—all of 
these processes were involved in this attitude of delight.” 

Disgust 

Obs. S. Series V I. Presented January 7, 1915. “When the mannikin 
was exposed to view, I merely glanced at it; then I had a visual image of a 
cadaver on which I had worked in my medical course; this visual image was 
remarkably clear, and the whole experience was toned with great unpleas¬ 
antness ; there were kinaesthetic and tactual images of my hands on the 
cadaver; olfactory images of carbolic acid and of formaldehyde; tactual and 
thermal images of the cadaver’s hardness and coldness; then I experienced 
a general feeling of depression, of inhibited breathing, of a moving and 
sinking of my internal organs, of nausea, and of a choking in my throat.” 

Obs. S. Series V 1. Immediate Recall. January 7, 1915. The observer 
had lived over again in this recall his learning experience; he had a visual 
image of the statue; he assumed empathically the statue’s posture and visual¬ 
ized himself in that posture, and had tactual and kinaesthetic images of 
running his hands over the smooth surface of the statue. “There was great 
unpleasantness; a jerking of my head and neck; a jerking of my internal 
organs and nausea.” 

Obs. S. Series V 1. Delayed Recall, after 7 days. January 14, 1915. 
“When I visualized the mannikin’s chin, I experienced a peculiar feeling 
which was extremely vague; then a visual image of a man with no chin at 
all appeared; a feeling of nausea and of unpleasantness; this peculiar feel¬ 
ing cleared up somewhat, and I was aware in kinaesthetic and visual imagery 
of bending over a cadaver; the unpleasantness was intensive.” 

Awe 

Obs. Fs. Series IV 1. Presented November 21, 1914. “With the visual 
perception of the words ‘transmigration of souls,’ there was an organic and 
a kinaesthetic experience, an attitude, typical of one starting to ask ‘is it 
not wonderful?’; an intangible and vague setting of my mouth for an ‘Oh!’ 
and a kinaesthetic image of exhaling for that expression of ‘Oh!’; a 
general bodily tonus, organic and kinaesthetic, characteristic of an awe¬ 
struck attitude.” 

Dismay 

Obs. B. Series I 1. Delayed Recall, after 82 days. February 2, 1916. 
“These two visual images (of two football players, one of them facing the 
observer’s left with left foot upraised, and the other player facing the right) 
alternated in clearness and shifted in positions; it was literally as if the 
two were trying to push each other out of consciousness; and accompanying 
this fluctuation, vocal-motor-auditory ‘goalP^no;—Kick-Off—which?’; and 
then an experience of dismay which consisted of slight unpleasantness, a 
consciousness of general bodily strains and tensions, and the fluctuations 
which the visual image underwent. It was just as if I were dismayed and 
sat here watching the conflict of the visual images.” 



A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


99 


Wondering 

Obs. B. Series Cl 5. Delayed Recall, after 21 days. February 9, 1916. 
There had been a confusing play or fluctuation of visual images; these 
images contained varying contents and they overlapped one another and fluctu¬ 
ated. “Eye kinaesthesis of looking from the goal posts to the player who was 
in the foreground of one visual image and then came other visual images of 
previous experiments; and then a wondering if I had confused the ‘punter’ 
picture with the ‘goal’ picture; this wondering consisted in a fluctuation of 
the visual images, in vocal-motor-auditory alternations of ‘punt’ and ‘goal,’ 
and ‘were there two?—I wonder?’; and still I sat passive, except for slight 
strains and tensions, not accurately digging the material out, just passively 
experiencing the play of the visual images.” 

Obs. Fs. Series IV I. Delayed Recall, after 21 days. December 16, 1914* 
“Upon the stimulus to recall ‘Transmigration,’ there came a starting of a 
consciousness which would have developed into a consciousness of wondering; 
the word ‘Transmigration’ lingered in auditory imagery; vocal-motor 
‘Why?—,’ with a setting of my mouth for that question.” 

Obs. T. Series Cl 4. Presented January 13, 1916. “My wondering, 
whether he was kicking the ball or whether he was just catching it, consisted 
of the concentration of my visual attention in perceiving the ball, and in the 
vocal-motor expression ‘he could not catch the ball in that position,’ and 
several other expressions similar to this one, while attention remained on that 
particular position of the player. Finally, there was the consciousness that 
he had just dropped the ball in order to kick it; this consciousness consisted 
of my visual perception, a drop of my eyes from his hands down to the 
ball, and then no further attention was paid to it; my attention turned to 
something else.” 

Confusion 

Obs. B. Series I 1. Delayed Recall, after 7 days. November 19, 1915. 
“While I was vocalizing my recall to the experimenter, my attention was 
concentrated on a visual image of a white square of paper which bore the 
caption ‘Kick-Off,’ which kept coming in, now in one position, now in another 
position. This shifting and vacillating made up a consciousness of con¬ 
fusion.” 

Obs. Fg. Series III 1. Delayed Recall, after 105 days. February 1, 1916. 
“The visual image was vague and indefinite, and did not stand out distinctly 
as a whole, but there was a fusion of details in the visual image and this 
fusion was somewhat of the nature of a composite picture or a picture 
superimposed upon another picture; attention alternated between visual 
images of this picture and of the title; and the whole experience was one of 
confusion.” 

Obs. Fs. Series IV 1. Delayed Recall, after 107 days. March 12, 1915. 
“The words came in vocal-motor-auditory terms and I repeated them four 
or five times, some of the words changing at each repetition; these images 
were interspersed with periods of mental blanks in which there was no clear 


100 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


process except a slight, dull, diffused compression in my head. These ex¬ 
periences of mental blanks and the compression in my head were the com¬ 
ponents of a consciousness of confusion.” 

Obs. O. Series IV 2. Presented October 6, 1915. “As I read the words 
of the material in terms of visual perception and vocal-motor-auditory 
imagery, there occurred a state of confusion, consisting of a consciousness 
of brain activity (which I cannot analyze better than this,—whether com¬ 
pression or not I cannot say) ; frowning and kinaesthesis of my head moving 
back and forth spasmodically; and no definite imaginal content although there 
were incipient tendencies to vocalize.” 

Obs. R. Series IV 1. Delayed Recall, after 25 days. April 12, 1915* “I* 1 
beginning my recall there was an experience of confusion, a kind of mental 
blank; and then my attention turned to the vocal-motor ‘Well, is this trans¬ 
migration?’; and then there came a confusing mass of very indistinct visual 
images of different titles and materials of previous experiments.” 

Obs. S. Series II 3. Delayed Recall, after 42 days. April 15, 1915. “After 
the instructions were given to recall the ‘color circle,’ I had very vague visual 
images of the color wheel which became clear gradually, and motor con¬ 
comitants of these confused and vague visual images; tensions in my face 
and around my eyes; there was no clear awareness of any particular detail 
of the visual image, but there was a more general bodily reaction to many 
details which were very rapidly fluctuating in the visual images; these visual 
images were flitting and evanescent in character. Before the images cleared 
up, there was an auditory image ‘What are those colors ?’ ” 

Obs. T. Series V 2. Delayed Recall, after 39 days. January 24, 1916. 
“On hearing the stimulus (‘Gym’), I experienced without any other antece¬ 
dent process a quick kinaesthesis of my head and eyes being turned toward 
the corner of the room where the mannikin had been presented, and on the 
background of the visual image a sort of squareish thing cleared up; no 
words as such were on it, but this schematic content functioned as the cap¬ 
tion of the material; it came just after the title-stimulus had been given 
by the experimenter and was located at the place of the original presenta¬ 
tion of the caption, and my attention held on it for a brief interval of time; 
my attention then left the caption, and in terms of kinaesthesis of head and 
eye-movements, attention went to the visual image field in front of me; 
there was a period of delay and confusion; no processes and a kind of mental 
blank except for kinaethesis of inhibited breathing accompanied with some 
unpleasantness. Then there came kinaesthetic and visual images of my 
legs being turned around; these images were not completed, for in the 
course of their appearing a localized visual image of the mannikin popped 
into consciousness.” 


Doubt 

Obs. B. Series III 1. Delayed Recall, after 14 days. October 29, 1915. 
“My attention went to the left-hand figure (the son-in-law of the ‘Bringing- 
Up-Father’ group of pictures) in the visual image, and there was a shifting 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING ioi 

of lines in this visual image; besides vocal-motor processes, there was a 
complex of doubt; this partly manifested itself in my visual image by the 
shifting of the lines of the picture; kinaesthesis of strains, of restlessness 
and of alterations of breathing; unpleasantness; and my attention went to this 
picture slowly and remained on it only a short time, that is, the visual image 
did not remain distinct, and my bodily attitude changed to an attitude of 
relaxation and of little or no effort, while my attention went to the experi¬ 
menter and to recalling the material to him.” 

Obs. F. Series Cl 5. Delayed Recall, after 21 days. December 13, 1915* 
“A series of vocal-motor processes which were accompanied by motor images 
of changes of my bodily position and changes of orientation; the vocal- 
motor images were very syncopated and they were expressions such as ‘was 
it this leg? (my right) or the other one?’; ‘was he kicking up there?—or 
lower?’ ‘No; lower is goal from field, and this goal—must be punt’;—‘Was he 
facing the other way?’ and here a change of my bodily position; ‘No; not 
this way—both players face the other way,’ and then a change of my bodily 
position back to the original posture. The processes followed each other 
very rapidly and I was aware non-focally of developing strains in my chest, 
abdomen, and head, and a very slow and shallow breathing, and also of 
slowly increasing unpleasantness which finally reached a high degree of in¬ 
tensity. Then I was again focally aware of my original bodily position 
(facing left and right leg kicking) ; a great decrease of strains and of un¬ 
pleasantness, and a resumption of normal breathing; all of these processes 
apparently meaning acceptance.” 

Obs. Fg. Series III 1. Delayed Recall, after 11 days. October 30, 1915- 
“There was doubt as to who it was in the picture who was winking his 
eye (father or son-in-law of the ‘Bringing-Up-Father’ group of pictures) ; 
this doubt consisted of a visual image of the old man winking, and then of 
the young fellow winking, and then an alternation between these two visual 
images; a kinaesthetic image of pointing my left arm toward my left side 
and, thereupon, the visual image of the young fellow persisted (this picture of 
the young fellow was on the observer’s left) ; my attention turned to some¬ 
thing else—to auditory images of myself reproducing the material to the 
experimenter, and thus terminated the experience of doubt.” 

Obs. Fs. Series I 1. Delayed Recall, after 94 days. February 13, 1915* 
There was doubt as to which leg the football player was standing on. “When 
I came to descibe that part of the picture my attention went to the hip 
region of the football player which was indefinite in the visual image; the 
image was shifted so that he stood on his left leg; attention then was just 
on the point of turning to a vocal-motor-auditory description of that leg 
with an accompanying slight relaxation of tensions, when there occurred a 
shift in the visual images so that the player was now standing on his right 
leg; vocal-motor-auditory ‘he must have kicked with his right leg’; imme¬ 
diately in the visual image the player resumed the position of standing on 
his left leg; here the recall halted; I visually perceived the experimenter and 
his table and my visual images of the football player vacillated and there was 
tension in my forehead; all this comprised a consciousness that previously 


102 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


I had had difficulty at this point of my recall. There was no affection 
present, but the doubt consisted in the slowing down of my recall-processes, 
in the vacillation of these processes, and in a slight tension throughout my 
body.” 

Obs. O. Series IV i. Delayed Recall, after 422 days. January 19, 1916. 
“When I started to recall I had a visual image of a card which was localized 
on the shutter where it had been presented, and the first word on the card 
was indented; on the card there was a mass of gray,—I could not tell whether 
the word was printed or written by hand. The words came very slowly, 
the auditory images preceding the vocal-motor especially in cases of im¬ 
portant words. The word ‘souls’ came slowly and in a developing fashion 
and was emphasized in vocal-motor-auditory imagery when it did come. My 
doubt consisted of the slow appearing of the auditory-vocal-motor processes, 
the indefinite manner in which the details were localized (they were in¬ 
distinct and wobbling in the gray of the visual image), and a vocal-motor- 
auditory hesitant question ‘is it-?’” 

Obs. S. Series II 3. Delayed Recall, after 42 days. April 15, 1915. “In 
recalling the fourth quadrant of the color circle, I was not aware of any 
relaxation of strains; my attention left this quadrant for a visual image of the 
first quadrant, and during this shift the visual image of quadrant four 
tended to insert itself; finally, the fourth quadrant shot itself into con¬ 
sciousness in full force and remained for a while; there were rising ten¬ 
sions throughout my body and increasing unpleasantness. The vacillation 
of my visual images, the holding of my attention on the fourth quadrant, 
and the increase of strains with unpleasantness were involved in my ex¬ 
perience of doubt.” 

Obs. T. Series I 2. Delayed Recall, after 18 days. November 8, 1915. 
“My doubt as to what were the letters and their colors in the caption of the 
material consisted partly of an indefinite visual image; when the visual 
image was present I was at no time conscious of color; even this indefinite 
visual image disappeared from consciousness and there was a complete turn 
of my attention to the act of expressing my recall to the experimenter.” 

The foregoing introspections show that there were certain 
characteristic conscious experiences which manifested a composite 
or a complex nature. The complex was not a mere juxtaposing 
of separate conscious processes, nor was it a mere succession 
of separate conscious contents and conscious events. All of the 
parts were fused and unified into one unitary reaction of con¬ 
sciousness to the situation in hand. One was able to analyze out 
some of the constituent elements, but to find the unifying factor 
or the unifying principle, if there was one,—that principle which 
bound these separate processes into one, active, dynamic reaction 
of consciousness, was near an impossible task. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


103 


These attitudes, as we may call them, can be classified into the 
following groups: surprise, disappointment, amusement, excite¬ 
ment, delight, disgust, awe, dismay, wonder, confusion and doubt. 

Surprise was characterized essentially by the suddenness of the 
appearing or the disappearing of a mental content or the sudden¬ 
ness of some functional change in a content; this phenomenon 
of a sudden variation in the flow of conscious processes was al¬ 
ways manifested in experiences of surprise. And very closely re¬ 
lated to this sudden functioning of mental processes there fre¬ 
quently occurred, as an integral constituent of the attitude-com¬ 
plex, some kinaesthetic phenomenon indicating some bodily ad¬ 
justment, indicating the occurrence of some Einstellung; this 
bodily component itself usually,—perhaps it is not unwise to say 
always,—was characterized by suddenness in its onset and often¬ 
times in its termination. The kinaesthesis here involved was 
constituted of strains and tensions and rigidity of bodily mem¬ 
bers. Many accompanying phenomena, very often varying in 
kind and in amount, included such states as vocal-motor-auditory 
exclamations and questions; eye-movements of a wandering, 
restless kind; inhibited breathing; high concentration of atten¬ 
tion; mental blanks and experiences of being dazed; haziness of 
content, often followed by the coming of definiteness; and un¬ 
pleasantness, which, we are tempted to say, always occurred 
either in slight or intense degree just at or just following the 
sudden and unheralded variation in mental processes and was 
due, in our opinion, to this sudden breaking of the dominant 
flow of processes. This last statement does not deny that there 
may have been experiences of surprise, which looked at in toto 
or post hoc , were dominantly pleasant,—and what we say of un¬ 
pleasantness has to do with the analysis of the state of surprise 
itself and not some after-event in consequence of or due to the 
state of surprise. It was very probably true that adjustment to 
the change or variation in contents, when completed or when 
well under way, was conducive to pleasantness; or, it was likely 
that the variation in contents just succeeding its onset, that is, 
when the new content, or the change in function, had attained a 


104 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


duration, or had the right-of-way in consciousness following its 
sudden emergence, was then followed or accompanied by 
pleasantness, this experience depending in no small part upon the 
fitting-in, or the facilitation, or the completeness of response, of 
the newly arriving content or changed function of content. If 
this were true, namely that the congruity of the incoming content 
with the already existing state determined the degree of pleas¬ 
antness present, our analysis of the state of surprise has not 
been invalidated; a pleasant surprise is a possible and a frequent 
event in one’s mental life. 

Disappointment consisted essentially in the slowing down, or 
the complete inhibition, or cessation, of one’s mental contents; 
the observer frequently described the experience as being one in 
which no images occurred, no process came,—the observer said 
'nothing came.’ Another invariable constituent of the attitude of 
disappointment was unpleasantness. Besides these, we discovered 
many variable forms of kinaesthesis, ranging from intense strains 
to complete relaxation, and inhibited breathing. Often there 
occurred slow, hesitant, and doubtful vocal-motor-auditory ex¬ 
pressions, remarks and descriptions of the learning and recall 
materials, etc. 

Amusement was a highly complex attitude. We may say at 
once that amusement always manifested pleasantness and kin¬ 
aesthesis of smiling or of relaxing the general bodily tonus or of 
squinting the eyes. On the conscious side there was very little 
concentration of attention; the observer was aware, either in 
perception or in imagery, of whole masses of details of a pre¬ 
sented material,—there was no analysis,—the perception was a 
general one rather tending toward unclearness. Attention con¬ 
stantly shifted. Many times there were vocal-motor-auditory 
exclamations and ejaculations of various kinds. These constitu¬ 
ent processes of the amused attitude made their advent in con¬ 
sciousness rather suddenly, and their coursing through conscious¬ 
ness was attended with rapid and sudden shifts. 

Excitement was characterized by an excessive amount of in¬ 
tense and clear kinaesthesis. This kinaesthesis may have been 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


105 


that kinaesthesis incident to relaxation or to tensions of various 
sorts,—it may have been that of a rising and falling in the in¬ 
ternal organs or that of accelerated breathing. There was often 
present also some visual, perceptual or imaginal awareness of the 
observer’s own body. Whatever images occurred were very 
shifting in course, partaking of the nature of the restlessness 
which characterized the general bodily condition at the moment. 

Delight was constituted in large part by the suddenness with 
which some content entered consciousness; this, however, alone 
did not give a consciousness of delight,—the contents had to be 
distinct,—there had to be pleasantness,—there had to be some 
bodily relaxation or decrease of tensions, as in smiling. Many ex¬ 
periences of delight had also a component of inhalation. 

Disgust, on the contrary, manifested, first of all, extreme un¬ 
pleasantness and a kinaesthesis of general bodily depression; 
there was a rising and falling of the observer’s internal organs, 
nausea, a choking in the throat, inhibited breathing, etc. 

In an attitude of awe the observer wore a startled, half-fright¬ 
ened expression, and experienced kinaesthesis and vocal-motor- 
auditory imagery of asking some question, or of being in a mood 
to ask a question. There was a poverty of mental contents other 
than those that we have described, and the observer’s attention 
did not readily shift, although there was no intense concentra¬ 
tion; attention here was extremely diffuse. The state was very 
similar to what we have in many places called a “mental blank.” 

The consciousness of dismay was a complex which included 
many factors highly fused together;—there were a great many 
fluctuations of whole contents, or if the contents did not fluctuate 
as wholes, there were numerous shifts and alternations in clear¬ 
ness, and the processes shifted their spatial localizations. The 
observer exhibited, in his speech kinaesthesis or in verbal images, 
a questioning inflection, a slow sort of hesitancy. There was un¬ 
pleasantness, which varied from a low degree to a high degree 
of intensity. There were a great many strains and tensions of a 
depressed, inert kind of bodily attitude or Einstellung. 

Fluctuation of imagery, with much overlapping and confusion 


io6 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


of details, was a chief characteristic of the attitude of wondering. 
Present also with these fluctuations were alternating and wander¬ 
ing eye-movements, slight strains and tensions of a sort of hold- 
ing-oneself-in-check, or a sort of slight restraint. Except for 
these slight strains, the observer was comparatively passive. 
There was much vocal-motor-auditory alternation and question¬ 
ing. 

Confusion exhibited a great quantity of fluctuating contents, 
with frequent repetition of processes, which continued ever to 
come and go. Very frequently the contents were characterized 
by vagueness and indistinctness, and at times they seemed to be 
superimposed one upon another into a puzzling mass. Atten¬ 
tion underwent much fluctuation. There were many mental 
blanks and a great quantity of unpleasantness. The motor phe¬ 
nomena of this attitude were frowning, inhibited breathing, com¬ 
pression in the head, vocal-motor questioning, etc. 

Doubt was very similar in nature to the attitude of confusion. 
The chief difference between the two lay in the fact that while 
in confusion there was a profusion of contents, which were vague 
and shifting, but no cessation or hold-up of consciousness, in 
doubt there was a haltiness, an impeded flow of conscious pro¬ 
cesses. Doubt showed shifting contents, kinaesthesis of strains 
and restlessness, unpleasantness, the holding of attention on the 
content at hand and the slow advent of the content which fol¬ 
lowed. Besides the factors here enumerated there were synco¬ 
pated vocal-motor-auditory images, in a questioning inflection, 
and the observer’s bodily attitude finally passed into one of pass¬ 
ivity and inertness. 

The Wurzburg psychologists 31 and their adherents in this 
country 32 have been champions of a so-called “imageless think¬ 
ing” and an assumed “thought element.” It was they who iso¬ 
lated and described the conscious attitude, which has been 
variously termed Bewusstseinslage, Bewusstheit, Wissen, and 

31 Kiilpe (87 and 88); Marbe (104 and 105); Mayer and Orth (109); 
Orth (136); Watt (199, 200, 201 and 202); Ach (5); Messer (113) ; and 
Buhler (32). 

32 Notably Woodworth (212 and 213) and Ogden (132, 133 and 134). 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


io 7 


Stellungsnahme . 33 The attitude of consciousness has been sup¬ 
posed by these psychologists to be unanalyzable, and, being un- 
analyzable, it of course was thought to furnish ample evidence 
of the existence of another element of mind other than the three 
orthodox elements of sensation, image, and affection; and, being 
unanalyzable, it lent itself in a capital fashion to the use of logi¬ 
cians and metaphysicians and transcendental philosophers and 
psychologists, who have always been disposed to find in mind 
pure elements of willing, of reasoning, of thinking, of self-activ¬ 
ity, etc., elements of a psychical universe or a world of ideas and 
psychic entities. 

The writer of this paper has been led by his own introspections, 
extending over a period of three years, and performed in a labo¬ 
ratory of psychology where introspection is rigorously and sys¬ 
tematically done and where one’s introspections are of little value 
until one has attained considerable practice and facility in intro¬ 
specting, and by the introspections of his colleagues and his ob¬ 
servers, extending over the same period of time, to the view 
that attitudes can be analyzed with fair thoroughness and in 
detail. Section B iv, pages 94 to 106, of this paper is devoted 
chiefly to analyzing many conscious attitudes, and to showing 
that there are many conscious processes, constituted of both con¬ 
tents and functions, which the Wurzburg psychologists have en¬ 
tirely ignored or have entirely missed in their investigations 34 of 
the thought-processes and to pointing out just wherein these 
psychologists have failed to do justice to the phenomena under 
investigation. 

33 A term coined by Muller-Freienfels (125, 126, 127 and 128). 

34 It is interesting to note in this connection that an investigation by Betts 
(25), entitled “The Distribution and Functions of Mental Imagery,” has 
been criticized in a seemingly just and pointed fashion by Miss Fernald (53). 
This work by Betts attempted to prove the existence of “imageless thought” 
and also to show that all imagery is irrelevant; and in Miss Fernald’s opinion 
(and in the opinion of the writer, these opinions being based on a mass of 
literature concerning mental imagery and upon our introspections and the 
introspections of our observers), Betts’s investigation fails in a great many 
instances to hit the mark and in other instances far oversteps the mark; 
and, yet, a quantitative and statistical and objective study should be, a priori, 
the most reliable sort of an investigation one can do. 


io8 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


b. Subjective Interpolations. When, in the learning, the ob¬ 
server misperceived some detail or details and failed to correct 
the erroneously perceived detail or details, the error continued 
to make its presence felt throughout the recalls. In the course 
of time, however, the erroneously perceived details manifested in 
themselves certain effects of forgetting similar to those undergone 
by the more correctly perceived data of learning. If, however, 
the observer obtained an inkling that his perception was incor¬ 
rect, and if he endeavored to correct it, this awareness of error, 
and this endeavor to correct erroneous details, exhibited certain 
effects throughout the recalls. Observer W. continued to recall, 
in visual imagery, the picture of a football player to one of whose 
legs was attached a picture of a third leg, but he was always 
careful to state that “It looks like a third leg pasted there.” In 
reality it was a smaller football player partially hidden by a larger 
player in front of him. A club and a spade of the caption-card 
of the “Pa Van Loon” picture (Series III 2) was continuously 
after the immediate reproduction recalled by Observer F. as 
black, whereas the details were actually green and in his imme¬ 
diate recall the observer had stated that they were green. In this 
connection, it is necessary to state that the observer never re¬ 
called the processes or procedures by means of which he obtained 
a given perception or a given imaged datum. This fact is in 
accord with Finkenfinder’s (55) finding that procedures which 
had been employed in solving problems were never recalled; it 
should be mentioned, however, that Finkenfinder’s instructions 
assigned to the observer the task of recalling his past attempts to 
recall that material. Our observers employed throughout the 
various experiments certain modes of recall which bore striking 
similarities; the fact of great similarities between the modes of 
recall after various intervals of time does not, however, mean 
that our observers recalled the various methods which they had 
in previous experiments employed in reproducing the material. 
This fact was particularly evident in the recalls of a selection of 
philosophical prose, consisting of two sentences, the second sen- 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


109 


tence being in the nature of a refutation of the first sentence. 35 
The observers did not recall their various attempts and pro¬ 
cedures to understand the relation between the two sentences of 
this selection. If additions were made by the observer, that 
is, if the observer injected subjective elements into the presented 
material, these were usually recalled; this process of injecting 
subjective elements into a recall and of subsequently reproducing 
the injected details led always to constructions and falsifications 
of content, etc. In learning the football picture “Kick-Off” 
(Series I 1), Observer F. noted in terms of visual perception 
and vocal-motor-auditory images that the player really was not 
kicking-off but was really punting. And this remark never failed 
to recur in his subsequent recalls. In its first occurrence it was 
accompanied by unpleasantness and a considerable amount of 
forceful inflection; but in the later recalls, it took on quite a 
mechanical and rote character, tending to occur upon the per¬ 
ception of the instruction to recall “Kick-Off.” This process of 
subjectively adding details to a material and then of subsequently 
reproducing these details occurred with Observer F. in the noting 
and recalling of a football picture entitled “Spiral” (Series Cl 
3) which he called “drop-kick,” and with another football picture 
captioned “King of Punters” (Series Cl 4) which this observer 
described as a picture of a football player drop-kicking. The 
picture captioned “Goal” (Cl 5) this observer called “punting.” 
Observer F s experience in dealing with these football pictures 
contained components of two widely different sorts; a com¬ 
ponent which F. received in relatively passive fashion from the 
content of the picture with its caption; and a component which 
he himself contributed,—the latter component being a product 
of his own critical reaction to the discovery that the content of 
the picture did not conform with its caption. And it was found 
that the “discovered” or “added” component was remembered 

35 Series IV 1 (hand written; title in red, rest in black) : 

Transmigration 

The Pythagorean doctrine had implied that any soul may migrate to dwell 
in any body. To this Aristotle retorts that skill in carpentry does not imply 
ability to play the flute. 


no 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


more accurately and more fully than the “received” component. 
This phenomenon is in accord with a finding which has recently 
been reported by Claparede (39) that if pairs of ready-made 
associations are presented to the observer he does not remember 
the second member of the presented pair nearly so well as he re¬ 
calls the second term of the association which he has himself 
made. Claparede is perplexed to find an explanation for such 
a state of affairs. It would appear that the self-made or sub¬ 
jective association, on account of its subjective and associatively 
organized nature, would naturally be stronger than the associa¬ 
tion artificially presented by the experimenter,—particularly so 
when the subjective association comes in to share or to monopo¬ 
lize the attention which would ordinarily be consumed in the 
noting or learning of the presented association. Herbart (48, 
p. 35) had in mind a similar idea when he stated that “As a 
general rule, the ideas coming from within are, by virtue of 
their established connections more potent than the single new 
percept, especially since the latter diminishes in power as its stim¬ 
ulating effect subsides.” Instead of receiving a maximum of 
attentive noting, the artificial association receives much less; 
further than this, the older or the subjective association receives 
in a degree a re-noting. Jost (81) has shown that of two asso¬ 
ciations of equal strength but of unequal age, the reproductive 
tendency of the older association can be more easily strengthened 
than that of the younger association. He employed the Treffer- 
Methode, and by selecting syllables which were not presented at 
the same time but which gave approximately the same Treffer- 
time, he was able to determine that with an added presentation 
or an additional learning a greater number of the older syl¬ 
lables were reproduced than of the newer syllables. The corrol- 
lary would apparently follow from Jost’s results,—namely, that 
the younger of two equally strong associations is in the course 
of time more easily forgotten. Ribot (159) has a similar con¬ 
ception in his law of regressive forgetting, in which he main¬ 
tains that forgetting proceeds by way of the details or the par¬ 
ticulars of a residuum of memory toward the more fundamental 
generalities of the memorial content. In our view, this means 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


hi 


that the age and the greater organization of the general features 
of a content give them a survival capacity greater than that 
of the more newly and less well organized details. And the 
view of retroactive amnesia, presented by Burnham (35), is in 
accord with the above-mentioned phenomenon,—the newly ac¬ 
quired and less organized data of impression are the more likely 
to suffer in the process of forgetting. 

Even after forgetting had progressed to the point where Ob¬ 
server F. was unable to recall the material asked for, he never 
failed to recall the one fact that “the player was not doing so 
and so, but was doing something else.” Our instructions in¬ 
cluded a stimulus to arouse the recall of a particular material, 
that is, the caption was orally called out to the observer. The 
fact that the stimulus or caption was orally given in each recall 
by the experimenter offers a state of affairs unlike that operative 
in Claparede’s experiment. In his experiment it was found that 
an artificial word-association was forgotten in favor of the ob¬ 
server’s own constructed association; but in our experiment the 
reagent did not entirely forget the presented caption (which 
would be analogous to the artificial word-association in Clapa¬ 
rede’s experiment). The similarity of results, however, is to 
be found in the fact that the football pictures which were asso¬ 
ciated with certain subjectively interpolated captions were for¬ 
gotten, while the inserted or injected captions were remembered. 
And, as we have stated in an earlier section of this paper, (p. 
47T), these subjective interpolations (or injected captions) led 
to erroneous recalls of the material after long periods of delay 
and after the progress of forgetting had attained large propor¬ 
tions. The erroneous recalls of Observer F. show that in terms 
of empathic attitudes he inserted or injected certain of his own 
associations which were not in the original material; while Ob¬ 
servers B. and 0 . tended to visualize certain details and certain 
newly constructed features which were not present in the original 
material but which were suggested by the original caption of the 
material. B. went so far as to visualize a spiral, metallic, spring 
when she attempted to recall the material (a football picture) en¬ 
titled “Spiral” (Cl 3); and, in recalling the material (a football 


1 12 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


picture) whose caption was “Goal” (Cl 5), she visualized goal 
posts on a football field and the players in different bodily atti¬ 
tudes. In recalling the material of Series III 2 which was cap¬ 
tioned “Rubes de Gink,” Observer 0 . visualized a common tramp 
seated by the roadside; this material had originally contained 
only pictures of the people of the “Bringing-Up Father” cartoons 
and had been labelled “Rubes de Gink” by the experimenter. 

The more or less extraneous commenting remarks employed 
in the earlier recalls tended very quickly to disappear. An 
example which illustrates this phenomenon occurred in the re¬ 
calling of the philosophical prose captioned “Transmigration” 
(IV 1). The observer never recalled his various remarks con¬ 
cerning the relation or lack of relation between the two sen¬ 
tences. 36 . But if certain relations were perceived or conceived to 
exist between different parts of a material, these relations always 
tended to be recalled. New constructions of details and interpo¬ 
lations by the observer of features which were not present in the 
original material followed the line of the recalled relations, that is, 
a recalled relation was an easy point fo entrance for subjective ad¬ 
ditions and distortions of content, such for example were addi¬ 
tions of overcoat and high hat to the men in the picture “Rubes 
de Gink” (father and son-in-law of the “Bringing-Up Father” 
group III 1) who were really attired in evening dress. In learn¬ 
ing the picture captioned “Rubes de Gink,” Observer Fg. in 
verbal terms described the son-in-law (of the “Bringing-Up 
Father” pictures) as a “dude”; and in long-delayed recalls this 
observer began to visualize the son-in-law as attired in a loud 
suit of checked clothes, thus following the line of association 
which was made possible during the presentation by his calling 
the son-in-law a “dude”; in the original material “son-in-law” 
was not attired in checked clothes but in evening dress. 

Objects, places and events, which had been suggested by the 
caption and its accompanying material on the original presenta¬ 
tion and in the earlier recalls, tended to disappear as time 
elapsed; that is, the later recalls were less and less characterized 
by the entrance of associations ouggested by the caption or by 

36 See footnote, page 109. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 113 

the nature of the learning material. Long delayed recalls, char¬ 
acterized by a weakened condition of associative bonds and by 
an increased disconuity of content, exhibited, on the other hand, 
a great profusion of the associations which had attended the 
original noting of the caption and the learning material. It was 
just the weakness of associative bonds and the disconuity of con¬ 
tent that permitted the entrance of these suggested associations; 
but the fertile soil for their arousal had been laid even as early as 
the presentation. Examples of suggested associations, of the 
kind that we have been discussing, are: visual images of the Har¬ 
vard stadium; visual images of football games; visual images of 
players; visual images of comic Sunday newspaper supplements 
(from which Series III i and 2 had been taken) ; visual'concrete 
and visual and vocal-motor-auditory verbal images of text-books 
on philosophy; and visual images of philosophy lecture rooms 
(with the materials of Series IV 1, 2, and 3, all dealing with 
philosophy). All of the facts here mentioned, namely that the 
observer in noting the material presented to him added associa¬ 
tions from his apperceptive storehouse of past experience,—he 
added elements to the material which were not objectively 
present,—that he then recalled these added associations for a 
short period of time following the presentation, and that they 
exerted a very strong influence in bringing to life distortions of 
content and additions of data in recalls after long periods of 
delay when the dissociated and weakened contents were most 
susceptible of distortion and falsification,—all these facts are 
closely related to those reported by Claparede, 37 and they lend 
support to the conceptions advanced by Jost, Ribot, and Burn¬ 
ham. 38 

c. Acceptance and Rejection. Introspective descriptions of 
one’s mental processes and one’s mental contents when made in 
an undetailed fashion lead very easily to the view that an ob¬ 
server experiences a specific act of accepting or of rejecting a 
datum of memory as correct or as incorrect. Introspective ac¬ 
counts of one’s mental behavior oftentimes include little more 

37 See this paper, p. no f. 

38 See this paper, p. in. 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


114 

than Kundgabe, or statements about one’s mental phenomena, 
information roughly referring to one’s processes of consciousness 
rather than thoroughly describing them. And it is introspective 
evidence of this kind that so often and so readily lends itself to 
the notion that the seeming experiences of “accepting” and “re¬ 
jecting” manifest in themselves some specific “act” or some 
specific “activity” or some specific “self-consciousness,”—and 
that these “acts” and these “activities” or “functions” operate 
upon a content to accept or to reject it. A hasty perusal or a 
superficial study of introspections which are in themselves thor¬ 
oughly descriptive and careful in character might easily lead to 
just the view that we have mentioned as being founded on un¬ 
reliable introspective data; and such a cursory study of reliable 
data might lend itself to the conception also that an observer 
adopts an “attitude of acceptance” or an “attitude of rejection” 
to a content recalled in memory, this “attitude” consisting mainly 
of kinaesthetic, organic, and affective components. Indeed, we 
were led, in the earlier stages of our investigation, to the latter 
view, namely, that an observer accepts or rejects a datum or a 
content of memory by merely adopting an “attitude” to it. But 
by sympathetically re-experiencing with our observers, living over 
again with them, their experiences of recall extending over a 
period of two years, we have been led to other conclusions, the 
nature of which will become evident as we proceed in our dis¬ 
cussion; and a careful and detailed study of the introspective 
analyses of their memory experiences which has extended over 
the same period of time has added force to our final conclusions. 

Strictly speaking, we cannot say that the observer “accepts” 
or “rejects” a memorial datum as correct or as incorrect;—to 
declare that the observer does “accept” or “reject” a content is 
to speak in general, loose, and every-day language. The con¬ 
tent, or the datum, as it is variously called, “accepts” or “rejects” 
itself. This self-active content may be an image or it may be 
some form of reflex motor reproduction, such as vocal innerva¬ 
tion, manual drawing, or some other form of kinaesthesis. The 
important point of the “acceptance” or of the “rejection” is the 
fact that there is manifested no observable “activity,” no discov- 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 115 

erable “function,” no manifest “act,” which is outside of the con¬ 
tent, which is either over, above or against a content. Exterior 
to the content itself, there are none of the Stumpfian “ Funk - 
tionen” (176) which serve to accept or to reject a content as 
correct or as incorrect. The content, that is, the image or the 
reflex reproduction or the kinaesthesis, is in truth a process . 39 It 
comes and it goes; it remains stable or it fluctuates; it becomes 
clearer or it dims; it is attended by many processes or it is unat¬ 
tended ; it fuses with other contents or it inhibits other contents; 
its duration is long or short; it is intense or it is weak; it is 
durable or it is fleeting; it appears rapidly or it makes its advent 
gradually; and it recurs, over and over again, or it never reap¬ 
pears. It is a process—it is continually streaming or flowing by. 
This process-content may at times be accompanied by a kinaes- 
thetic and affective reaction. It was this accompaniment of a con¬ 
tent by a reaction of the kinaesthetic-affective kind that at first 
induced us to suppose that the content was accepted or rejected 
by the action of an “attitude” working on it. A closer examina¬ 
tion of our introspective data, however, sheds additional light on 
the phenomenon in question; and the kinaesthetic-affective com¬ 
ponent of the experience is not to be characterized as an “atti¬ 
tude of acceptance” or “of rejection” unless we exercise extreme 
caution in our terminology. The differentiating criterion has 
to do with the employment of the terms with and to. In other 
words the complex which is termed a kinaesthetic-affective re¬ 
action, or an attitude, appears with, that is, accompanies, the con¬ 
tent or some aspect of the content; it is not an “attitude to” the 
content or some aspect of the content. All consciousness of 
“relation” or of “act,” or of “reference to an object” is lacking. 
Expressed more adequately, the process-aspect of the content oc¬ 
curs as a part of the entire more general attitude-complex. The 
observer, in most cases, experienced the two phenomena as simul¬ 
taneous as far as he was able to judge; but he did not experience 
the reaction as two ,—it was, in fact, a whole unitary reaction 

39 For a philosophical and logical discussion of the point in question, see 
MacLennan (103). Cf. also Wundt’s description of the process-aspects of 
“ideas,” footnote, p. 52 f., this paper. 


ii6 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


for him; and even the content itself was an integral part of the 
whole reaction. Oftentimes the appearing of a content or a 
change in the process-aspect of the content was a forerunner of 
the “attitude/’ the kinaesthetic-affective reaction which we were 
once disposed to call “attitude of acceptance” or “attitude of re¬ 
jection.” (In this employment of the word “attitude,” the term 
is used for want of a better characterization and when used with 
“acceptance” and “rejection” it does not connote any element of 
willing, or choosing, or selecting, or acting on the observer’s 
part; the observer was not aware of functions of selecting or 
acting or choosing in the experience). Sometimes kinaesthesis 
of strains and tensions of a general bodily kind preceded the ad¬ 
vent of a content or a change in the process-aspects of that con¬ 
tent. This kinaesthetic reaction of strains and tensions hardly 
fits the phenomenon that we are discussing and we have already 
accorded it a place under the “recall attitude” (p. 84 f.) where it 
properly belongs. The kinaesthetic-affective complex, or reac¬ 
tion, or attitude, never functioned as an antecedent process; and 
the content with its changing aspects was, according to the ob¬ 
server’s description, an integral part of the complex, very often 
it was the most focal part; and very often the kinaesthetic (and 
organic) and affective components were lacking from the com¬ 
plex altogether and the contents were the only components left. 

It is well at this point to mention the kinds of component pro¬ 
cesses which constitute this reaction-complex. Many of the in¬ 
trospections which have already been quoted are illustrative of 
the points under discussion. Clear, durable, definite, and spon¬ 
taneous images of recall were accompanied by a relaxed and com¬ 
fortable attitude of the observer and sometimes he experienced 
pleasantness; the observer’s attention was not long fixed at any 
one stage of the process but the holding of his attention there 
was appreciable though not excessive. Attention, or the attentive 
process here under discussion, means clearness and shifts of 
clearness and under the latter aspect, of a shifting clearness, are 
included the coming in and the going out of whole processes. 
The observer tended to complete his recall at once in one or an¬ 
other manner, or his attention (here employed almost synony- 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING n 7 

mously with the stream of conscious processes) forthwith occu¬ 
pied itself with other matters. On the other hand, unclear, in¬ 
definite, vacillating images or fluctuations of whole constellations 
of imagery were accompanied by kinaesthesis of strains and ten¬ 
sions, and often unpleasantness; attention held here for a very 
long time. This functioning of attention, although a very char¬ 
acteristic one, was not the only phenomenon to fit the condi¬ 
tions; attention frequently shifted in short order and without 
much ado to other pursuits; or attention, after holding for a 
short time, turned to other matters, as if reluctant to shift; and 
in this case attention might shift back as the recurrence of the 
process which had just disappeared. These are extreme types of 
attitudes differing from each other by wide margins. There were 
transitional complexes ranging in between these two, but these 
two are illustrative types which are closely resembled on one 
side or the other by the transitional forms of attitudes. 

The foregoing description will serve to show that attention, in 
its functional aspects, was one of the very first factors in memory 
to show the effects of forgetting, and it will also serve to show 
that attention was a constant exhibitor of the effects of forget¬ 
ting. Many points of the introspections which have already been 
quoted bear evidence of these two facts. It is also a fact that, 
after forgetting had made a great inroad into the contents of 
memory and little residua of impression remained, attention 
still manifested, in its functional manner, certain characteristic 
phenomena due to forgetting. In this light, then, attention in¬ 
cluded more than clearness; it included shifts in clearness; and it 
also included the coming and the disappearing of whole processes 
of consciousness. By attention are meant practically all of the 
phenomena characterized as process-aspects of mental contents. 
Notwithstanding the fact that attention played such an effective 
and large role in the experience of acceptance and rejection, there 
were other factors at work. Among these other factors were 
such factors as variations in the intensive and in the durative 
attributes of mental contents; in their functioning, forgetting 
was manifested in certain characteristic fashions. Stumpf might 


n8 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


contend (176) that the factor of attention was in fact essentially 
that “self-activity,” that peculiar “function”; and that it was 
“working on” the contents. In answer to such an assertion, we 
might state that attention did not manifest itself outside of the 
“contents” which have sometimes been supposed (5, 31, and 176) 
to be affected by the “acts” and by “awarenesses.” In the second 
place, the observer was not aware of accepting or of rejecting a 
given datum of memory,—the datum in question persisted or 
disappeared, or what not, and its ultimate fate seemed apparently 
to be beyond the control of the observer. In the third place, the 
processes included in our use of the term “attention,” since they 
always occurred as inherent aspects of a content, not outside, 
over, above, or beyond the content, were determined or influenced 
or affected by the degree of forgetting. In the fourth place, 
the intensive and the durative aspects of the contents, with their 
multitudinous variations, were as significant in determining ac¬ 
ceptance or rejection, and in exemplifying the stages of the pro¬ 
cess of forgetting, as was attention. Finally, the kinaesthetic, 
organic, and affective components of what we have characterized 
as an attitude occurred just as frequently with other factors as 
with that of clearness; indeed, they occurred more frequently 
with durative and the process factors,—for instance, with 
such factors as spontaneity, suddenness, persistence, stability, and 
their opposites. If clearness (or Stumpf’s “awareness”) is ac¬ 
ceptance or rejection, it would appear that a focally clear datum 
of memory would be reproduced by the observer and would be 
designated by him as a genuine recall of the originally learned 
datum. Very frequently the observer did not reproduce nor did 
he designate as genuine the clear datum that appeared to con¬ 
sciousness; this fact we have noted on pages 63,' 69, 72, and 106 
of this paper. It would be equally obvious, were Stumpf’s 
hypothesis correct, that if the datum of memory were unclear or 
were only marginally clear, this relative lack of clearness 40 would 

40 Finzi (56) is said by Meumann (115, p. 100) to have advanced a 
hypothesis similar to that of Stumpf, namely that the distinctness of the 
image plays a leading role in giving rise to the feeling of certainty or to 
the acceptance of a datum as correct. 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 119 

constitute a rejection,—that is, either a failure to include the da¬ 
tum in question or a positive act of excluding it from among those 
contents which are reported to the experimenter as a genuine re¬ 
call of the original material. Most frequently this was not the 
case. The mere fact that a datum made its appearance at a 
certain point in a certain situation,'—no matter how definite or 
indefinite the datum might be, no matter how great a wealth or 
poverty of details it might display,—proved to be a potent factor 
in determining that it be accepted as constituting a part of the 
content of the recall; and the fact that it disappeared at another 
point or in a certain situation,—no matter how focal or how lack¬ 
ing in clearness the detail might be,—was also a factor of great 
import in the rejection of the datum as not genuine and as not 
belonging to the recall in question. 

Attention we have mainly characterized as the functional 
aspects of mental contents; and we have asserted that the data 
of memory, besides showing in themselves the effects of for¬ 
getting, also exhibit marks of obliviscent damage in the manner 
in which attention operates in the process-aspects of the memory 
contents. We have found evidence for assuming the existence 
of four typical functionings of attention, with special regard to 
acceptance and rejection, and also to subjective assurance and 
lack of assurance (in a later division of this paper we take up the 
two latter topics where we shall cite from the introspections 
data amply covering acceptance and rejection and relating to sub¬ 
jective assurance and lack of assurance). These four types of 
functioning are roughly indicated in the description of the atti¬ 
tude-complexes (p. 86; 93 ff.). The two which occurred in accept¬ 
ance, or oftentimes in a consciousness of certainty (subjective 
assurance), are: 1. a slight continuance, or duration, or per¬ 
sistence, or stability, of a given degree of clearness. This was 
not an impeded flow of consciousness; it was rather a regarding, 
a noting, a recognizing experience. It manifested itself not only 
in the fact that a higher degree of clearness was present, but also 
in the fact that it bore certain contextual process relations with 
the processes which had preceded it and with processes which 


120 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


followed it; for example, when this functioning of attention was 
present, the observer was usually passive, or was comfortable, or 
experienced pleasantness; he was not concentrating his efforts 
in an attempt to decipher just what the detail of the memory 
material might or might not have been; and his consciousness 
readily turned to other matters. 2. The second type of the 
functioning of attention was much the same as the first; here 
perhaps the duration of the functioning was shorter than in the 
first type. The process was much more rapid in its course and 
was less intense; the observer barely experienced a certain pro¬ 
cess, and even this process was present in only moderate degrees 
of clearness and with slight focality. The observer’s stream of 
processes was occupied elsewhere in short order. The contextual 
phenomena, such as we described for the first type of functioning 
of attention, were more conspicuous in the second type. The 
other two types of the functioning of attention were character¬ 
istic of rejection and more particularly of subjective lack of as¬ 
surance, that is, uncertainty. 3. The third type offered a striking 
contrast to the first type in that the third type was essentially an 
impeded consciousness; this impededness manifested itself in con¬ 
tinual shifts, vacillations, or oscillations of clearness relations; 
no one degree of clearness continued for any appreciable length 
of time—persistency of a certain degree of clearness was not 
the rule in this functioning. But there was a persistency of 
this vacillating state and it was characteristic of the experience 
in question. Here the antecedent and subsequent contextual 
aspects of the process showed on the one hand, shifts and fluctua¬ 
tions of whole processes, and on the other hand, kinaesthesis of 
strains and tensions and frequently unpleasantness. It rarely 
happened here that the observer concentrated upon a detail of the 
recalled material or that he assumed the “recall attitude” to 
which we have referred in various places (p. 84 f.). 4. The 

fourth type was very similar to the third, except that the 
process of this type had a much shorter duration; its progress 
was more rapid; it manifested a lower degree of focality; and 
it usually exhibited no shifts of focal relations. And, too, the 
context processes were not very prominent here. The observer 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


121 


was rather skipping, or slurring over, or avoiding the recall of 
a particular detail; he exhibited a very low degree of concentra¬ 
tion and very little effort to obtain the detail or to determine its 
genuineness. In so far as the interrelationships of these four 
types were concerned, we may characterize the first type as a 
richer and more complex variant of the second type; and the 
fourth type may be described as a mechanized form of the 
third type. That is, in the period which immediately followed 
the learning, the second type predominated, and later, in the 
course of forgetting, this gave way to the first type; soon after 
learning, when forgetting was still in its incipient stage, the 
third type was manifested; but, when much forgetting had taken 
place, the third type gave way to the fourth. 

It would be of interest and value to discover what leads the 
observer to discriminate and select among the mental contents 
which come to consciousness during his act of recalling, and to 
decide that certain contents belong to the original material and 
are genuine recollections while others are intruders which do not 
belong there. This problem is the problem of acceptance and re¬ 
jection, which has already been discussed (p. 113 ff.) ; and all 
that has been pointed out in regard to acceptance and rejection 
applies here. But it is to be noted, in addition, that certain fac¬ 
tors stamped an image as an extraneous association, and infre¬ 
quently there were certain factors which stamped another image 
as one of recall. It often happened that the extraneously asso¬ 
ciated datum or event was so localized as to give evidence of 
its extraneous character; it was not localized at the place where 
the material had been originally presented nor at the point to 
which the observer’s fixation or bodily adjustment was directed. 
The image frequently bore a vague, far-off character; and some¬ 
times the intervening objects between the observer and the point 
of localization of the extraneous datum appeared in the margin 
of focality while the extraneous datum itself was at the focal 
point. The former phenomenon, the far-off, vague character of 
the image served to stamp that image as not belonging to the 
recall being made; and the latter phenomenon, that of distance 


122 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


and the intervention of objects expressed by the focal relations of 
the image, served also to characterize certain images as 
extraneous. It must be said, however, that not every vague and 
far-off image was labelled or treated as being extraneous; nor 
was the representation of distance and of intevening objects, by 
the mechanism of focal relations (see figure of cone, p. 44 f.), 
always a sure index of extraneousness. This latter phenomenon 
was well illustrated by an experience of Observer 0 . who visual¬ 
ized (Series Cl 4) the Harvard stadium focally, while glimpses 
of the landscape between Worcester and Cambridge were mar¬ 
ginally present in the visual image; this difference in focal re¬ 
lations, with the intervening landscape, served to stamp the Har¬ 
vard stadium as being far removed from the observer and from 
the material being recalled at that moment by him. Frequently 
just the mere difference in content between that material under 
recall and the extraneously associated material, without the ob¬ 
server being aware of this difference, was sufficient to initiate 
a reflex reproduction of the material under recall and the ex¬ 
clusion of the extraneous datum from this reproduction. But 
here it must not be forgotten that the observer was working 
under an Aufgabe to recall and under an Aufgabe to recall a 
certain material, and since his recall was under way with partial 
success, we must conclude that certain reproductive tendencies 
had been set into operation and that these were fulfilling the 
function of excluding the extraneous contents and the function 
also of continuing the reproduction of the material which was 
in line with that called for by the Aufgabe. In this manner cer¬ 
tain recall materials were controlled, or their recall was directed, 
by recall-attitudes and attitudes which had been germane to the 
learning experience (see p. 84 f.; 92). In some fashion the ob¬ 
server imaged, or fixated, or adjusted to, the place of the original 
presentation; or he imaged the material there. If he were unsuc¬ 
cessful in that procedure, a correct recall was less likely to take 
place, although he might in desperation adopt a recall attitude 
with its various strains, tensions, Aufgaben, trial recalls, etc. 
And, as in the case of a difference in content, which served to 
initiate the disappearance of an extraneous datum, so did a dif- 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


123 


ference of size often function in a like manner to exclude a non- 
genuine datum, the observer being unaware of the difference in 
size. Failure of the extraneously associated datum to fuse with 
other data, namely those of the original material; its sudden 
and spontaneous manner of appearing and disappearing, without 
heralding its advent and without saying farewell; and its failure 
at other times to reappear at all, were perhaps the most significant 
aspects characterizing the datum as belonging to the group of 
extraneous associations. But, as forgetting became progressively 
greater and greater, the extraneously associated datum tended 
more and more to acquire for itself a place in the data of the 
recall materials. The following introspections will illustrate the 
points under discussion: 

Obs. B. Series III 3. Delayed Recall, after 98 days. March 8, 1916. The 
observer had been recalling the comic picture showing “Pa Van Loon” 
seated at a table cheerily fingering poker chips; the picture was exposed 
through a round opening in a black cardboard, and above the opening there 
was mounted a white card bearing the caption “Poker Shark” supplemented 
by drawings of a heart, a diamond, a club, and a spade. In the course 
of time the observer had forgottten the caption card above the picture; it 
was white, and this fact may have led to the extraneous association which 
crept into this particular recall. “The visual image of the man, ‘Pa Van 
Loon,’ was localized at the shutter; and then on the black background above 
and to my left there came a visual image of the top of the table and a woman 
standing behind it facing me; she was larger than the man, who was still 
in the circle in my visual image; she wore a white apron, a dark waist, 
her sleeves were rolled up, and a rolling pin was in her hand; at one point 
she took it up in her right hand as if it were a club. In the first part of this 
recall, this picture did not appear in the visual image; when it came, it ap¬ 
peared in a detached form somewhat similar to that used by artists to repre¬ 
sent a dream; it was not on the black background and was above and to the 
left of the circle; there was no fusion of any kind between the two visual 
images; it had come in quickly and spontaneously in the form in which it 
persisted throughout its entire course; attention was slightly held on it, not 
in a concentrated fashion but in a relatively passive fashion. 41 The visual 
image of this woman disappeared from consciousness, and I reproduced the 
material.” 

Obs. B. Series II 1. Delayed Recall, after 33 days. January 19, 1916. 
“In trying to recall the first square of the nine squares, I experienced two 
or three times the vocal-motor-auditory images ‘z—q—figures?—figures?— 
must have been—’; a visual image of ‘1522’; then when I was perceptually 

41 See p. 119 f. in regard to this functioning of attention. 


124 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


fixating the whole square comprising the nine smaller squares, such ques¬ 
tioning processes as I have just described kept coming in; there was a visual 
image, located on the shutter, of a white card at the top of which was a 
triangle containing a circle; the circle fluctuated in color from a vivid blue, 
a yellow, to a red; the circle flashed into view and persisted until it became 
focal; attention remained there a moment, and then kinaesthesis of shaking 
my head in negation with vocal-motor-auditory ‘No, you do not belong to 
this material; you belong to the color circle’; but it persisted just as vividly. 
Then came a visual image of the color circle (II 3) with its colored sectors 
and segments; my visual image of the triangle still persisted, but did not 
blend with the colored circle material; they were not in the same plane and 
did not fuse; then the visual image of the colored circle (II 3) dropped out 
of consciousness; there appeared black lines making a square around my 
triangle; decided pleasantness and a sitting up straight, making up a sort of 
‘there you are!’ consciousness.” 

Obs. B. Series II 1. Immediate Recall. December 17, 1915. “There 
flashed in quickly, clearly and spontaneously a visual image of nine squares 
on the white paper before me, the paper on which I was to draw; a green 
triangle with a red ball in it came in square two and I drew it there. In my 
visual perception, visual perception for I was still looking on the paper on 
which I was drawing, there was a shift of attention to square one; its white¬ 
ness stood out very prominently and continued to stand out; this phenomenon 
of attention remaining on square one, together with the absence of other 
processes except strains in my eyes and in my head, made up for me a sort 
of confused consciousness, a sort of mental blank, meaning that square one 
must have been occupied by some detail. Finally, after some considerable length 
of time, there was a release of strains and a vocal-motor-auditory ‘Well—go 
on to something else.’ ” 

Obs. Fg. Series I 1. Immediate Recall. November 23, 1915. “In recall¬ 
ing the smaller football player, I had no visual image of him; I knew he 
was there, that is, I had a kinaesthetic set, oculo-motor and general bodily 
kinaesthesis as though I were leaning forward, to see something off in the 
distance behind the larger player, together with a vocal-motor ‘where is that 
other player?’ I could not visualize him, but I was visualizing the larger 
player.” 

Obs. Fg. Series I 1. First Delayed Recall, after 21 days. December 14, 

1915. “I visualized the larger player in a definite manner; the smaller player 
developed vaguely in the visual image after eye kinaesthesis of straining and 
peering into the distance. The whole visual image of the smaller player 
came in rapidly, but its details developed very slowly; this visual image passed 
out of consciousness more slowly than it came in.” 

Obs. Fg. Series I 1. Second Delayed Recall, after 49 days. January 11, 

1916. “My visual image of the smaller player was very indistinct; it was 
separate from the visual image of the larger player except for that part 
of the visual image corresponding to the larger player’s kicking leg.” 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


125 


Obs. Fg. Series I 1. Third Delayed Recall, after 70 days. February 1, 
1916. “After considerable roving of attention over my visual image of the 
figure of the larger football player, there came in quickly a visual image of 
the smaller player behind the larger player’s left knee. What I saw of the 
smaller player was clear, definite and persistent.” 

Obs. Fg. Series I 1. Fourth delayed Recall, after 77 days. February 8, 
1916. “Eye kinaesthesis of following up the outline of the kicker’s body, 
which developed clearly in the visual image,—and then I had a visual image 
of the smaller player behind the larger one; immediately I had the vocal- 
motor Aufgabe ‘down,’ meaning that there was the smaller player and I 
could proceed with the recall of other details; and my attention left the 
smaller player.” 

Obs. Fg. Series I 1. Fifth Delayed Recall, after 100 days. March 2, 
1916. “After a visual image of the larger player had developed somewhat, I 
had the vocal-motor Aufgabe ‘go ahead—clear enough,—get small player,’ and 
without waiting for my visual image of the smaller player to develop I began 
to vocalize my recall to the experimenter.” 

Obs. T. Series II 3. Delayed Recall, after 189 days. December 9, 1915. 
“I had drawn the circle mechanically after the instructions were given, and 
had divided it into quadrants; I recalled details in two of the quadrants (we 
omit here the description of that recall). Then I had a consciousness that 
the other two quadrants contained some data; this consciousness was an 
attitude that the quadrants were really filled; it consisted of the standing 
out of these quadrants in visual perception, for I was actually looking at the 
paper in front of me on which I was to reproduce the material and on which 
I had already drawn the circle and marked off the quadrants; a manual 
kinaesthetic tendency to make small marks in these quadrants, and my atten¬ 
tion was impeded in this procedure; I did not leave these quadrants for a 
long period of time.” 

Obs. T. Series III 1. Immediate Recall. April 17, 1915. “After visual¬ 
izing the pictures of the ‘Bringing-Up Father’ characters in detail, I ex¬ 
perienced continued eye-movements up and down over the whole material 
as though I should be able to recall more details.” 

d. Certainty and Uncertainty. Meumann (115, p. 100) 
points out the fact that, heretofore, we have known very little of 
how the feeling of certainty originates in our remembrances. It 
is hoped that this section of this paper will throw some light on 
the solution of the problem. 

Our introspections contained numerous references to the pres¬ 
ence of explicit conscious experiences which the observer charac¬ 
terized as certainty, or subjective assurance,—and uncertainty, 
or lack of subjective assurance. In its more explicit and rich 


126 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


form, certainty was a complex which centered around a peculiar 
functioning of attention: a characteristic state of a spontaneous, 
sudden, stable degree of clearness. The complex here was not 
very unified in regard to its^ constituent elements,—they could 
appear in even discursive fashion; and the various components 
of the complex were not well mechanized into a well-working 
group of processes. In its richer form a consciousness of cer¬ 
tainty may be thus described: the recalled contents made their 
entrance into consciousness very rapidly, even abruptly but with 
no need of assistance or effort, that is, in a spontaneous manner; 
they were clear, definite, intense, and definitely localized; the 
contents were stable and non-fluctuating, and when the observer 
reported his recall to the experimenter he described the contents 
forcefully, positively, emphatically, and more or less reflexly; 
these contents presented no characteristics of an impeded con¬ 
sciousness; the contents did not fluctuate and disappear only to 
reappear or recur again; and during the presence of these con¬ 
tents, in the manner in which they were present, and making a 
part of the entire attitude-complex, pleasantness, and a relaxed, 
composed bodily adjustment, were experienced by the observer— 
he experienced a relative lack of strains and tensions, and he 
was at his ease, so to speak. 

The following introspections are illustrative: 

Subjective Assurance or Certainty 

Obs. B. Series II i. Immediate Recall. December 17, 1915. “I was ab¬ 
solutely certain as to the content of the second square of the group (the 
content was a green triangular area upon whose centre was pasted a red 
disc) and as to the content of the fifth square (the content was a green 
leaf) ; and so far as I can tell this certainty consisted of the quickness and 
the spontaneity with which the images came, their intensiveness, their clear¬ 
ness, and their stability; there was pleasantness, but at other places, on other 
details, in the recall there were other degrees of certainty, and these degrees 
of certainty seemed to arrange themselves according to the degrees of quick¬ 
ness, spontaneity, clearness, and stability of images.” 

Obs. F. Series I 1. Delayed Recall, after 21 days. December 8, 1914. 
“The rest of the recall proceeded in vocal-motor-auditory imagery of my 
own voice, followed in many cases by motor imagery of assuming the posture 
recalled through verbal imagery, such as ‘right arm raised,’ ‘right toe well 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


1 27 


pointed/ and the like; all this was called out to the experimenter with a 
high degree of subjective assurance, consisting in the positive, forceful, re¬ 
flex manner of my vocalization, pleasantness, and a sort of composure-atti¬ 
tude or a relative lack of strains, and then a flop of attention.” 

Obs. Fg. Series III 1. Immediate Recall. October 19, 1915. “My ex¬ 
perience of certainty consisted of the clearness of my visual imagery, its 
durability for it did not fluctuate, and the fact that each image disappeared 
readily; there was no trace of an impeded consciousness.” 

Obs. Fs. Series II 1. Delayed Recall, after 4 days. May 5, 1915. “When 
I reached for the paper on which I was to draw the material, the visual 
image of the squares came back again; there was a rapid shift beginning 
with the first square, then to the second square, to square four, across 
squares five and six not stopping on them, and down to square nine; a sweep 
back to square seven, and this sweep was very rapid; the contents of the 
squares seemed to become more definite changing to their proper forms 
instantaneously. All the foregoing experience was a consciousness of cer¬ 
tainty that I could recall the material.” 

Obs. O. Series II 1. Delayed Recall, after 49 days. April 16, 1915. “I 
was absolutely certain that the content of the fifth square was a leaf; this 
certainty consisted of the spontaneous entrance of the image into conscious¬ 
ness, its clearness, its persistence, and the fact that attention turned from it 
readily for other matters.” 

Obs. R. Series IV 1. Delayed Recall, after 25 days. April 12, 1915. 
“When the experimenter gave the instructions for me to recall ‘Transmigra¬ 
tion/ there was a visual image of a library card bearing the caption ‘Trans¬ 
migration’ in red ink at the top and underlined in red, and about six lines of 
words in black ink; they were very vague and were localized in front of 
me. I turned in my chair and faced the table where the original presentation 
had been made; I settled back and regarded the visual image which was still 
localized in front of me. While I was turning there came a feeling of 
certainty, and this in so far as I can describe was composed of a general 
bodily relaxation, pleasantness which was not very dominant, the clearness 
of the visual image, its persistence, its spontaneity in persisting without 
effort on my part as if it had been there all the time and I had until now 
failed to give it much attention, and that in turning in my chair and settling 
back in ease I had removed the barrier and the visual image was right there 
ready.” 

Obs. S. Series II 3. Delayed Recall, after 14 days. March 18, 1915. 
“After my visual image of the fourth quadrant had fluctuated a great many 
times, there finally came a visual image of one segment in a bright green 
color of excessive brightness. This visual image of the green segment led 
to the experience of certainty of this datum of memory, consisting for the 
most part in the cleraness of the image, relaxation of my bodily strains after 
the images appeared, a general bodily feeling of ease, and the long contin¬ 
uance of the image—it did not flit in and out of consciousness—and my 
conscious processes turned without much ado to other matters.” 


128 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


Obs. T. Series IV 2. Immediate Recall. November 15, 1915 - “The minor 
details of the material (the material consisted of typewritten philosophical 
prose having insertions of colors, capital letters, hyphens, underlinings, etc.) 
came in visual imagery which was accompanied by vocal-motor imagery. 
Some of these contents disappeared suddenly; the details of which I was most 
certain were the ones to disappear suddenly; they were focal, definite, and 
definitely localized. There was a visual image of the word ‘US/ which was 
followed by a visual image of the word ‘WE’; but the certainty which at¬ 
tached to ‘US/ consisted in its being more definite and in the fact that it 
was the last process to appear, that is, the visual image of ‘US’ reappeared 
but the visual image of the ‘WE’ did not reappear. Immediately I reacted 
with ‘US’ to the experimenter; and there was no tendency for the process to 
recur or for me to go back to it; and .throughout I was comfortable.” 

Obs. W. Series I 1. Delayed Recall, after 7 days. November 21, 1914. 
“The clear visual images had attached with them a more active state; this 
more active state consisted of a slight increase of bodily tension diffused so 
much that I can hardly localize it, similar to kinaesthetic attention involving 
the muscles of my face and throat; a sudden developing clearness in the 
visual image; for the clearest features of the visual image there were very 
rapid shifts to near features, these shifts entailing no kinaesthesis of eye- 
movement but being successive in character. Very often the visual imagery 
had a setting in other visual imagery of previous experimental situations 
which when occurring are very marginal and which are very rapid and 
fleeting. With clear visual imagery there was subjective certainty which 
manifested itself merely as a persistence of a given degree of clearness 
during the shifts of my attention to different features of the material present 
in the one visual image.” 

In its more mechanized form the consciousness of certainty 
was essentially a peculiar functioning of attention; this peculiar 
functioning manifested itself primarily as a turn of the processes 
of consciousness to other matters or to other pursuits, but this 
shift did not take place until there had been a relatively long 
persistence of clearness; absolutely, this persistence could be 
very slight in duration, and it was necessary that the persistence 
be not too excessive and that it be of a constant and durable 
kind unattended by shifts or even the slightest vacillation. In¬ 
cluded under the factors of a persistent clearness and a shift to 
other matters were the factors of spontaneity and suddenness 
characterizing the advent of contents into consciousness. It 
little mattered what the particular content was or what the 
datum of the recalled material may have been; if it came to be, 
or if it functioned, in the manner that we have described, it was 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 129 

invariably attended with subjective assurance. In making this 
statement we do not contend that the occurrence of certainty was 
an easy matter. It was an extremely difficult and infrequent 
happening for a process of consciousness to fulfill the require¬ 
ments necessary for giving it assurance; on the other hand, a 
process of consciousness too often failed to meet the conditions 
which would have prevented the insertion of incorrect data into 
the recalled material and which would ordinarily have brought 
certainty of the contents presented in recall. Besides the type of 
certainty 42 here described there were, of course, more rich and 
more complex experiences of subjective assurance; this richer 
consciousness of assurance characterized the later recalls , 43 while 
the more mechanized experience of certainty appeared in the 
earlier recalls. The relative frequency of the occurrence of cer¬ 
tainty increased toward the later recalls. This naturally raises 
the question: when does an experience of certainty or uncertainty 
arise? Neither of these two experiences ever occurred, save 
in rare instances, unless some variation in the flow of conscious¬ 
ness had preceded their rise. If the contents of the recall con¬ 
sciousness were at the outset, slow, halting, and hesitant, and if 
an easier and smoother flow then ensued, certainty was likely 
to be experienced by the observer . 44 On the other hand, the 
observer was likely to experience uncertainty, if an easy flow of 
consciousness were followed by a halting, or a cessation, of the 
stream. It is obvious from the facts just stated that both cer¬ 
tainty and uncertainty increased in frequency as forgetting pro¬ 
gressed and as time elapsed, for the flow of consciousness was 
slowly becoming more variable in the smoothness of its course 
and more halting in character. It must be mentioned, however, 
that the observer’s recall might have proceeded in the smoothest 
flow of consciousness possible and still the observer might not 

42 These types of the functioning of attention are treated in detail on p. 

II 9 ff. . 

43 Meumann refers (115, p. 99 f.) to Finzi’s (56) results relative to the 

great increase of certainty with long lapses of time after learning when the 
objective correctness of memory is greatly decreased. Our results substantiate 
those of Finzi. 

44 See Meumann’s brief discussion of certainty (115, p. 100). 


130 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


have experienced a consciousness of assurance; and on the other 
hand, the observer might have reproduced the material in the 
most hesitant, slow, broken, and halting fashion, and still he 
might not have experienced a consciousness of uncertainty. 
Neither the one nor the other consciousness occurred except after 
a variation in the flow of processes. The experiences of uncer¬ 
tainty were much more frequent than those of certainty. 

Uncertainty, as a conscious experience, manifested, in its richer 
and less mechanized form, a complex of components clustered 
around a specific functioning of attention as a core. The com¬ 
ponents which comprised this experience were practically the 
obverse of those which characterized the experience of certainty. 
The type of attention which served as a core to the experience 
of uncertainty was a slow, hesitant, vacillating, shifting, instable 
sort of clearness. The processes of recall entered slowly, halt¬ 
ingly, or if they occurred rapidly, just as rapidly did they oscil¬ 
late and fluctuate, or, again, perhaps the observer strained or 
resorted to the use of various Aufgaben in an effort to initiate 
certain processes which failed to occur; frequently, the contents 
of recall were extremely vague. The recall contents appearing 
did not blend or fuse. Throughout the more complex experience 
of uncertainty, the observer’s attention, or the stream of his con¬ 
scious processes, was impeded. He did not readily turn to other 
matters; and, if he did, the former processes, those from which 
he had turned, were likely to recur and to alternate again. The 
experience of uncertainty was replete with pauses and mental 
“blanks.” The concomitant processes lacked emphasis; they 
were characterized by a hesitancy, a lack of force or positive¬ 
ness; they fere characterized by a questioning, a doubtful sort 
of inflection, etc. The recalled contents were not spontaneous in 
their appearing. Throughout the more complex form of uncer¬ 
tainty, the observer experienced unpleasantness, and strains and 
tensions; he was not at his ease,—he was not composed. 

The experience of uncertainty, unlike that of certainty, mani¬ 
fested three stages of functioning in the recalls after long inter¬ 
vals of delay. The first stage possessed no great number of the 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 131 

various factors which have been designated as belonging to the 
experience of uncertainty; but the factors of vacillation, alterna¬ 
tion, and an obstructed consciousness were not mechanized nor 
were they very rapid in temporal course; for instance, the first 
content to occur after fluctuation, may have been the last process 
to occur, thus terminating the experience, while attention turned 
to other matters. The second stage of the functioning of un¬ 
certainty made its advent when the amount of forgetting had 
increased. This stage manifested all varieties and the greatest 
profusion of processes constituting subjective lack of assurance. 
It was the more complex and the richer form of the experience. 
But, a little later in the course of forgetting, when fewer details 
were recalled, and when many of the uncertain details had van¬ 
ished or had almost vanished through failure to recall them, we 
found quite a mechanized experience of uncertainty; this was 
the third stage. It consisted mainly in the slow appearance of a 
content, then a slight persistence or slight shift of its clearness, 
and then the content disappeared. This third stage of uncer¬ 
tainty was similar to the fourth type of the functioning of atten¬ 
tion described on p. 120 f. It was a sort of skipping, or omitting, 
or a passing of consciousness over, a content of recall. The im¬ 
peded consciousness, which, we have seen, was so characteristic 
of uncertainty in general, was in this stage of functioning very 
slight, hardly noticeable. 

The following introspections are illustrative: 

Subjective Lack of Assurance or Uncertainty 

Obs. B. Series II 3. Delayed Recall, after 7 days. November 24, 1915. 
“I fixated the third quadrant, that is I visually perceived the drawing which 
I had already begun; vocal-motor-auditory ‘yellowish-red/ and then a visual 
image came of this color projected into this third quadrant; then vocal- 
motor-auditory ‘blue.’ Then came an experience of uncertainty: eye kin- 
aesthesis toward the lower part of the circumference of the circle, and this 
kinaesthesis then ceased, and there came manual kinaesthesis of reproducing 
the drawing farther up in the quadrant; there was a repeated alternation of 
‘square’ and ‘yellow-red’ in vocal-motor-auditory imagery; I experienced 
strain in my eye-muscles as I fixated the paper on which I was to draw; 
quickly and very clearly there appeared a visual image of a bright yellow 
square which immediately dropped out of consciousness; and vocal-motor- 


132 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


auditory ‘NO!’ and a kinaesthetic tendency of my eyes to move toward 
quadrant two, my attention turning to other details.” 

Obs. F. Series II 2 . Delayed recall, after 12 days. November 1, 1915- 
“Vocal-motor images of the words ‘Soldiers’ Drill—printed’ came in a fairly 
rapid manner; then there was a slow vocal-motor ‘colored ?—green ?—green ? 
—yes, green—’ which was characterized by a low degree of subjective assur¬ 
ance; this low degree of subjective assurance consisted of the slowness of 
the vocal-motor images, the questioning inflection with which the images ap¬ 
peared, and the frequent pauses in the imagery; my attention was obstructed 
or impeded.” 

Obs. Fg. Series V 1. Delayed Recall, after 35 days. January 11, 1916. 
“My uncertainty of the spot under the mannikin’s left eye consisted of a 
visual image of it as located there, the disappearance of this visual image, 
then vocal-motor imagery of ‘two spots,’ but no visual image came to localize 
the two spots; attention held on the mannikin’s eye for a short while and 
my attention slowly left it for other details.” 

Obs. Fs. Series V 2. Delayed Recall, after 73 days. March 30, 1915. 
“I experienced uncertainty in regard to his hair (the hair supposed to have 
been possessed by the mannikin) and this uncertainty consisted in the fact 
that the visual image shifted and persisted, attention being held on it or going 
to it frequently; there were relatively few strains or tensions; for that 
moment consciousness was impeded but finally in the course of time shifted 
to the recalling of other details of the material.” 

Obs. O. Series Cl 5. Delayed Recall, after 21 days. December 15, 1915. 
“The uncertainty which I experienced here was composed, so far as I can tell, 
of these factors: the clearing up of my visual image and then its sudden 
disappearing not even remaining in the margin of consciousness, the lack of 
cohesion or fusion among the details of the visual image and the isolation 
of the elements in it, the lack of past associations which would give me aid 
in deciphering the details of the material; the images that came were not 
spontaneous and I was experiencing strains in my eyes, forehead, neck, and 
face, and unpleasantness, in my effort to recall the material.” 

Obs. R. Series V 1. Immediate Recall. April 29, 1915. “I was uncertain 
as to whether or not the mannikin’s hands were held palms up; this uncer¬ 
tainty was describable in terms of the facts that my visual image was vague 
as to that detail; attention was occupied a long time in the vocal-motor- 
auditory description of that detail; a shift from the visual image of the man¬ 
nikin’s hands to an actual visual perception of my own hands; then the 
mannikin’s hands became clear and persisted in clearness in a visual image; 
then attention busied itself elsewhere.” 

Obs. S. Series II 3. Immediate Recall. March 4, 1915. “In the lower 
left-hand section of the third quadrant I had an intense experience of un¬ 
certainty or of hesitation; my visual image of the color fluctuated, and I 
experienced unpleasantness and with unpleasantness strains of frowning and 
of being ill at ease; my conscious flow was impeded but I staid with the 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 133 

task of recalling and my attention did not turn to other matters at this 
moment.” 

Obs. T. Series IV 2. Delayed Recall, after 3 days. November 18, 1915. 
“The word ‘US’ stood out in visual imagery but alternated from being just 
a red space to being two black capitals; the image of the black capitals was 
the first process of the fluctuation, that is the first to occur, and it was 
the process with which the experience terminated, that is, it was the last 
process; the image of the red space after alternating with the black capitals 
once did not reappear; there was during this an organic and kinaesthetic set 
of being in doubt, of wavering in hesitant fashion between two alternatives 
and of being tensed and quiet.” 

C. SUMMARY 

1. An observer undertakes to recall learned and retained ma¬ 
terials in a manner which is strikingly similar to the procedure 
he employs in learning the material; this similarity manifests it¬ 
self in imaginal type, in the use of both pertinent and extraneous 
associations, in the manner in which clearness relations behave in 
the contents, in the rate and the direction of the coursing of con¬ 
tents through consciousness, in the unity and the discreteness of 
a ’mass of contents, and in the adoption of learning attitudes. 

2. In an observer’s learning and remembering, the process- 
aspects of his mental contents are always very important carriers 
of meaning; these processes or functions of contents are not to 
be regarded as existing outside of mental contents but as con¬ 
tents themselves in function. 

3. In the course of forgetting there come into operation 
mechanisms belonging peculiarly to the process of forgetting; 
these mechanisms are a process of typification and a process of 
analysis. Besides these mechanisms there are operative the 
mechanisms of condensation, displacement or transposition, 
dramatization, and secondary elaboration. The latter four 
mechanisms are just as characteristic of forgetting as are the 
former two, and on their faces they bear no evidence of having 
resulted from the repression of sexual complexes; they lead one 
to believe that forgetting itself, appearing in the forms of disso¬ 
ciation and assimilation, is responsible for both the character of 
dream images and the character of memory images and images 
of imagination. 


134 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


4. Typification is a process very similar to a process of gen¬ 
eralization; instead of being a re-organization of details, some of 
which have been lost, as in a generalized content, it is a progress¬ 
ive functioning of a developing sort of clearness, and this devel¬ 
opment occurs from recall to recall, so that finally, in the later 
recalls, the clearness relations are represented in the form of a 
cone: the apex of the cone, near and pointing toward the ob¬ 
server, would represent the clearest detail, the detail which typi¬ 
fies or represents similar details or details which had been twins 
or triplets in a material, and the surface of the cone extending 
toward its base away from the observer would represent the less 
and less clear details; the base would represent the most obscure 
details. It is significant of this process of typifying that the 
details which grow to the maximum degree of clearness are de¬ 
tails which are most essential to the integrity of the dominant 
meaning represented by the learning material. The most im¬ 
portant fact concerning this mechanism, so far as the process of 
forgetting is concerned, is that it is a source from which images 
will lose details and will in the course of time become more and 
more schematic and syncopated and ephemeral. 

5. The mechanism of analysis has its beginning in the shifting 
of clearness from detail to detail in one image, the more striking 
and the more important details standing out very clearly, and the 
outlines of the material being followed out until dominant foci 
of clearness are reached. This mechanism is a potent source 
from which there issue, in the course of forgetting, disintegrated 
and discrete images; and these images will more and more, in the 
course of time, tend to come to consciousness in a successive, 
discursive fashion, each being a new entity in itself. 

6. Typification and analysis are kin, for in the course of time 
when forgetting has made much headway, they are responsible 
for a great many subjective interpolations and are open roads for 
much subjective alteration in and addition to the original con¬ 
tents. 

7. The phenomena of forgetting result from the operation 
of at least two somewhat reciprocal processes, namely: a process 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


135 


of disintegrating and losing of details with a characteristic typi¬ 
fying of contents,—this process we call dissociation (which we 
have mentioned in conclusion number 3); and a process of sub¬ 
jective selecting, interpolating, and clarifying with its character¬ 
istic mechanisms of condensation, transposition, and elaboration, 
—this process we call assimilation (which we have mentioned in 
conclusion number 3). 

8. The interpolative, constructive or additive process pro¬ 
gresses much more slowly than the destructive or subtractive 
process, and is very largely dependent on it for existence. How¬ 
ever, as the time elapsing since learning increases, and the effects 
of forgetting grow larger and more striking, the assimilative 
process moves with greater acceleration and with greater momen¬ 
tum. 

9. The additive and alterative process is more likely to affect 
these two sorts of contents: minor details which are similar to 
details comprising the dominant meaning of a material and 
which in themselves conduce to this very dominant meaning; 
and details referred to by the observer in his various remarks 
during the act of learning and during his acts of recall, those 
details being perceived with an undue degree of clearness during 
the original presentation or which were perceived to conform 
to this or that relation, the relation being the observer’s own 
contribution to the act of perceiving, and various details which 
called up associated details from other materials and other ex¬ 
periences. In regard to minor details which are conducive to the 
dominant meaning of a presented material, we may say that their 
extraneousness is a factor which leads to their independent sur¬ 
vival, in discrete images, and that their similarity to essential 
details is a factor which leads to their being qualitatively altered 
in the course of time to fit the main context of the dominant 
meaning, The observer’s various remarks, inferences, remote 
associations, and perceptual contributions, all making fertile soil 
for the arousal and growth of subjective constructions, altera¬ 
tions, additions, re-combinations, etc., in the course of forgetting, 
show great strength and come to the fore in great numbers when 


136 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


there is a great disconuity of content and when forgetting has 
weakened and broken associative bonds. Jost’s law finds no 
greater confirmation than these subjective interpolations, many 
of which had their rise in the act of learning when the observer 
perceived the material, his associations growing progressively 
stronger than those artificially presented by the experimenter. 

10. In addition to the mechanisms which we have described 
as being essentially constituent processes of forgetting, namely 
typification, analysis, condensation, transposition, and elabora¬ 
tion, all included under the processes of dissociation and assim¬ 
ilation, there are at least two mechanisms which indicate the 
presence of forgetting for reason of the very fact that they re¬ 
sist forgetting and they change forms in the course of time due 
to the effects of forgetting on them; they are the mechanisms 
of certainty and uncertainty, and acceptance and rejection. Each 
of these mechanisms passes through various degrees of mechani¬ 
zation and syncopation, from mechanisms wealthy and large in 
content to mechanisms exhibiting a poverty of contents and 
which are extremely schematic and fragmentary. 

11. Certainty in its more explicit and rich form is a complex 
which inheres around a peculiar functioning of attention, this 
peculiar function of attention being a clearness which rises to 
its maximal intensity very suddenly and very spontaneously and 
whose most characteristic feature is stability and constancy, 
even though this state of clearness be short-lived; it is a peculiar 
form of stableness and we are inclined to assert that it is the 
heart and core of the mechanism of certainty, and, notwithstand¬ 
ing the fact that the experience is one manifested in clearness, 
the clearness itself is in function and is not a static sort of clear¬ 
ness nor is it one which appears outside of some content; in short, 
certainty is this peculiar, constant, stable, non-fluctuating aspect 
of clearness, not simply isolated clearness as Stumpf might con¬ 
tend (176). Uncertainty, on the other hand, is a slow, hesitant, 
vacillating, shifting, instable sort of clearness; or rather it is the 
inconstant, instable, fluctuating aspect of clearness. These re¬ 
sults, as to the very important character of the process-aspects 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


137 


of clearness in forms of resistance to forgetting and as processes 
of a logical memory, are new or are relatively so, but one has to 
look only at the phenomena of perception and the role of clearness 
in perception, particularly at those mechanized forms of clear¬ 
ness manifested in reversible perspective illusions, in abstraction 
and conception (57), in classifying (58), in recognition (211), 
and in understanding,—one has to look only here and one will 
find many phenomena of a striking kinship to those that pertain 
to experiences of certainty and uncertainty. 

12. The mechanism of acceptance, or of rejection, is unlike 
the mechanism of certainty, or of uncertainty, by virtue of the 
fact that it most frequently functions as a reflex, automatic act, 
and has few if any conscious components or characteristics; 
Ach’s determinierende Tendenz, meaning the reproductive ten¬ 
dency influenced or determined by the Aufgabe to recall a definite 
material which was once learned, is the best characterization for 
the mechanism, and this term is found to be a most suitable one 
for the reason that, as forgetting makes greater and greater 
inroads into the contents of memory and more and more associa¬ 
tive bonds are broken and the contents become more discrete and 
discontinuous, the Aufgabe to recall a definite material becomes 
less and less effective, and more false and extraneous associations 
are inserted into the recall contents as genuine reproductions of 
the original material. Another dissimilarity between the two 
sorts of mechanisms consists in the fact that, while certainty or 
uncertainty was manifested in some peculiar constancy or incon¬ 
stancy or fluctuation of a given degree of clearness, acceptance 
or rejection has nothing to do with clearness either as a static 
process or as a moving and fluctuating phenomenon; rather ac¬ 
ceptance and rejection is manifested in the entire coursing 
through consciousness of whole constellations or strains of con¬ 
tents, on one hand, and in the completion or termination of reflex 
reproductions and the turn of consciousness to other matters, on 
the other hand. There is no specific conscious experience, or 
act, of accepting or rejecting a content of recall as genuine or 
non-genuine. When the mechanism manifests itself in its more 


138 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


complex and rich form, there are found many conscious con¬ 
comitants of the experience in the manner of kinaesthesis of 
strains and relaxations from strains and the occurrence of pleas¬ 
antness or unpleasantness; but very often these accompaniments 
are entirely lacking. When they do occur, they frequently ac¬ 
company the intensive and the durative aspects of the contents as 
well as the mere occurring to consciousness of certain contents 
regardless of how great a degree of clearness these contents 
may possess or how constant or instable the clearness may be. 
The mere fact that a content of recall made its entrance into 
consciousness at a certain point in a certain situation,—no mat¬ 
ter how definite or indefinite the content might be, no matter 
how great a wealth or poverty of details it might display; or 
the mere fact that consciousness turned to other matters in short 
order or with little ado, proved to be a potent factor in the func¬ 
tioning of the mechanism and may be conceived as an act of ac¬ 
ceptance although the observer was in no degree aware of the 
act or that he was acting. And the fact that the content dis¬ 
appeared at another point in a certain situation,—no matter 
how focal or how lacking in clearness it might be,—was also a 
factor in the operation of the mechanism and may be termed a 
rejection of the content as not genuine, although the observer 
was not waare of any act or of acting. 

13. The more mechanized form of certainty characterized 
the earlier recalls, the recalls when forgetting had made little 
progress and had resulted in little damage to the memory con¬ 
tents; the more complex form of certainty characterized the 
later recalls, the recalls which exhibited the effects of a great de¬ 
gree of forgetting, when the contents were very fragmentary and 
discrete and when subjective interpolations in great number had 
been added and when assimilation had effected striking altera¬ 
tions in the contents. These facts would lead one to suspect 
that certainty is a product of an observer’s own organized asso¬ 
ciations, and that when these are thwarted or their functioning 
is hindered or impeded, these arises an experience of uncertainty. 
This conjecture is borne out by the following facts that: if the 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


139 


contents of the recall consciousness were at the outset slow, 
halting, and hesitant, and, if an easier and smoother flow then 
ensued, certainty was experienced by the observer; and, if an easy 
flow of consciousness were followed by a halting, or a cessation, 
of the stream, the observer experienced uncertainty. Neither 
certainty nor uncertainty was exhibited by the observer unless 
after a variation in the flow of processes, and, therefore, we must 
conclude that this variation is responsible for the arousal of 
certainty and uncertainty in recall experiences. This throws 
further light on the fact that, in the earlier recalls when forget¬ 
ting was in its incipient stage and the contents were being disso¬ 
ciated and variations were beginning to occur in the flow of pro¬ 
cesses, uncertainty was experienced more frequently than cer¬ 
tainty,—but when assimilation had gained the ascendancy over 
dissociation, in the later recalls, the relative frequency of certainty 
increased despite the fact that the objective correctness of the 
contents was steadily being more and more impaired. 

14. Attention, regarded not only as being clearness but also 
as being the functional aspects, the process-aspects, of mental 
contents, is one of the very first factors in memory to show the 
effects of forgetting and it is always a constant exhibitor of the 
effects of forgetting. Other investigations have discovered and 
it is generally held that the direction which one’s train of asso¬ 
ciations will take is largely determined by the functioning of 
attention,—that attention brings to consciousness certain con¬ 
tents of recall and excludes from consciousness other contents in 
proportion to the “intensity,” the “systematic complexity,” and 
the “effective co-operation” of the associations in which atten¬ 
tion manifests itself,—that attention mainly determines what 
shall be the observer’s attitude in making his recall,—and that 
the distribution of attention is responsible in large part for the 
size of the recall image. This experiment has ascertained, we 
hope beyond all possibility of doubt, that the functioning of at¬ 
tention,—the “intensity,” the “systematic complexity,” and the 
“effective co-operation” of associations,—and the distribution of 
attention are all affected, if not wholly determined, by the 


140 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


amount and the character of the forgetting which has taken place 
before the recall is had. Regarded in the light of these facts, 
forgetting is not a passive affair but is primarily an active, dy¬ 
namic function, which operates in a cumulative fashion to pro¬ 
duce more forgetting, and once under headway will serve as an 
agent to break and to obscure other associations and to knit to¬ 
gether still other associations and to contribute to the form of 
all sorts of subjective constructions. As to the purpose, or the 
teleology, of such a function called forgetting, and as to the 
source whence it obtains its driving force, this paper is not con¬ 
cerned; we are not disposed to go behind the scenes and behind 
the facts in an effort to speculate as to the purpose of such a 
mental function; we are not inclined to say that the individual 
is thus striving to be the largest, best personality of which he is 
capable. We are ignorant as to the meaning of it all. 

15. There are at least four types of the functioning of atten¬ 
tion which manifest themselves in conjunction with the mechan¬ 
isms of certainty and uncertainty, and acceptance and rejection. 
These four types are: 1 . A clearness which possesses a high de¬ 
gree of focality and which persists in just that state for an ap¬ 
preciable length of time without vacillating or shifting. The 
consciousness here exhibited is not an impeded one; it is rather 
a regarding, a noting, a recognizing consciousness. It possesses 
also a peculiar contexual relationship with the process-contents 
preceding and following it, such for instance as kinaesthesis of 
passivity or comfort with a feeling of pleasantness. The con¬ 
sciousness gives place readily and spontaneously to other con¬ 
tents. 2 . A clearness less intense than that of type 1 , but which 
possesses a shorter duration and whose course is more rapid; this 
clearness is just as free from vacillation or instability as is clear¬ 
ness 1 . The stream of processes turns more quickly and more 
spontaneously to other matters than was the case in type 1. Con¬ 
texual and accompanying phenomena, such as kinaesthetic and 
affective contents, are more complex and rich and occur in a very 
conspicuous manner. 3. A clearness which can be described as 
an impeded and a halting consciousness. There are continual 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


141 

shifts, vacillations, and oscillations of the clearness relations of 
contents, no one degree of clearness persisting for any appre¬ 
ciable length of time; but this vacillating state of the clearness 
relations continues until the observer becomes weary. There 
occur also shifts and fluctuations of whole trains of contents, and 
with this unsettled state of affairs there is a conspicuous wealth 
of kinaesthesis of strains, and feelings of unpleasantness; but, 
notwithstanding this perplexing functioning of contents, the ob¬ 
server rarely concentrates upon a detail or assumes even a “re¬ 
call attitude.” 4 . A type of attention very similar to type j, but 
with a lower degree of focality and a course much more rapid; 
there are few shifts of focal relations although there are a great 
many fluctuations of whole contents. Contexual phenomena in 
the form of kinaesthesis and affection are relatively lacking, and 
closely allied to this is the fact that the observer exerts very 
little effort to obtain a detail of recall or to determine the gen¬ 
uineness of a detail,—he is rather skipping or avoiding or omit¬ 
ting a particular detail. These four types are interrelated: type 
1 is a richer and more complex variant of type 2 ; and type 4 is 
a mechanized form of type J. In the period which immediately 
followed the learning of the material, type 2 predominated,— 
and later, when forgetting had progressed further, type 2 gave 
way to type 1 . Soon after learning, when forgetting was in its 
most incipient stage, type 3 was manifested,—and when much 
forgetting had taken place, several months after learning, type 
5 gave way to type 4 . 

16. Affection proved to be a disappointing factor in the deter¬ 
mining of the accuracy and the fidelity of memory and recall of 
details of materials employed in this investigation; in fact, there 
was no discoverable correlation between presence of affection in 
learning and perceiving, and accuracy and correctness of re¬ 
calling. Whatever affection attended the presentation of a ma¬ 
terial for learning tended to disappear at once, and the immediate 
recalls and recalls after one or two weeks showed no traces of 
the original presence of affection. Notwithstanding the lack of 
observable effects, in recalls, of affection germane to the act of 


142 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


learning, the later recalls, those recalls after forgetting had 
made extensive ravages on the memory contents and when as¬ 
similation had been more and more active in bringing to light the 
observers’ own organization of associations and effecting various 
subjective constructions and interpolations and alterations, there 
was a very noticeable increase in the presence of unpleasantness 
and pleasantness. This state of affairs would lead one to wonder 
what is the nature of affection? and when does it arise in one’s 
repeated recalls of learned materials? The writer is inclined to 
the view that pleasantness is a process of the fitting in or the 
congruity of an association with an observer’s organization of 
associations, and if the fitting in is easy or is facilitated, no re¬ 
sistance being offered by the subjective mass of associations to 
the incoming member, the observer experiences pleasantness; and 
tihat unpleasantness is a process of failing to fit in, or of hin¬ 
drance or resistance to the entrance of a new association into an 
observer’s organized mass of associations. Confirmatory sup¬ 
port is given this hypothesis by the fact that in this investigation, 
in the delayed recall after learning, affection seemed to occur 
only at points of success or failure to recall. This fact is under¬ 
standable in view of another fact, namely the fact that the ob¬ 
server was working under the Aufgdbe to recall, and we can 
assume that this Aufgabe served to arouse a mass of reproductive 
tendencies to recall a certain material asked for by the experi¬ 
menter and which the observer had once learned. The appearing 
of any datum, whether correct or incorrect, just at the moment 
when the observer’s efforts to recall were most active, contributed 
to the feeling of pleasantness. The failure of the observer to 
“get started” upon a recall, or his failure to remember any datum 
in a recall, usually contributed to the feeling of unpleasantness, 
this experience of unpleasantness being the more intensive the 
greater the observer’s efforts to make a recall. Moreover, affec¬ 
tion played only an accessory or an incidental role in the observ¬ 
er’s recall; it never preceded the observer’s efforts to recall and 
usually followed after such efforts. In not a single instance in 
this investigation did affection usher or escort a datum of recall 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


143 


into consciousness and did affection remain behind, after for¬ 
getting, as the only content left by the process of forgetting. In 
view of these facts, we are inclined to dissent from the views 
held, on one hand, by Thorndike (181 and 183), Tait (179), 
Hollingworth (74), Colegrove (42), and Kowalewski (86),— 
that pleasantness exercises a stamping-in valence and that in 
consequence of it pleasant experiences are better remembered 
that unpleasant data of learning,—and, on the other hand, by 
Abramowski (1, 2, 3, and 4),—that after all other contents of 
learning have been forgotten, there still remains the feeling- 
content which actively resist the entrance of false data to sup¬ 
plant the forgotten details. 

17. This investigation has yielded no evidence to show that 
affection is in any fashion related to organic sensations or organic 
images, or any organic consciousness whatsoever. Moreover, 
there is no observable relation between the occurrence of affective 
processes and the occurrence of kinaesthesis in any form what¬ 
soever. Our data bring to light not one specific form of kin¬ 
aesthesis for pleasantness or for unpleasantness; nor do our 
data give the slightest hint of any “pattern” or complex of kin- 
aesthetic components which functions as either pleasantness or 
unpleasantness. Pleasantness was found to be present frequently 
with no kinaesthetic or organic accompaniment whatsoever; and 
various forms of kinaesthetic and organic consciousness were 
present with no pleasantness whatsoever. Moreover, pleasant¬ 
ness was often found as an accompaniment of strains and ten¬ 
sions and of an increase in the intensity of strains and tensions. 
On the other hand, unpleasantness was frequently manifested 
without the accompaniment of kinaesthesis or organ-aesthesis, 
and various forms of kinaesthesis and organic consciousness were 
in evidence unattended by unpleasantness. And, indeed, unpleas¬ 
antness frequently attended a decrease of strains and tensions, 
oftentimes occurring with a total relaxation from strains and 
tensions. 

18. As a determiner of the correctness or incorrectness of a 
recall, and as regards its role in experiences of acceptance and 


144 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


rejection and certainty and uncertainty, in an observer’s logical 
memory and his resistance to forgetting, affection played no more 
than an incidental service; in fact, there is no discoverable de¬ 
termining influence that can be ascribed to the affections in recalls 
after short and long periods of delay after learning in experi¬ 
ments such as were conducted in this investigation. Whatever 
influence one might ascribe to the affections in these experiments 
seems somehow to be bound up, on the one hand, with an ob¬ 
server’s subjective organization of his own associations, and, on 
the other hand, with an observer’s successful and unsuccessful 
attempts to subscribe to and to carry out the Anfgabe to recall, 
regardless of the accuracy and the correctness of the recalled 
data, and regardless of the genuineness or the non-genuineness of 
the subjectively presented associations. 

19. The visual image of the immediate recall is a highly or¬ 
ganized mental process; it contains a great number of details 
and features or elements which are systematically knit together 
and unified into one single process in such a manner that the 
several components do not appear in even a composite character, 
—these several details or components are simultaneously present 
to consciousness and the more typified the clearness relations of 
the details the less do they appear to consciousness in discrete or 
discursive fashion, and the less do shifts of clearness occur within 
the details in one image. Closely resembling the visual image 
in its composition of details or features and in its being unified 
and well-knit, the empathic image is a simultaneous presentation 
of kinaesthetic features which are not to be called even com¬ 
ponents, for they are somehow more typified and more ephemeral 
and more unconstrained than are the features of a visual image. 
The visual image contains many more features condensed in a 
much smaller compass than does the empathic image, but the em¬ 
pathic image is of broader compass, often involving the muscles 
of the entire body in such a manner that the observer cannot 
definitely locate the various constituent kinaestheses, and pos¬ 
sesses a much more perfect unification and typification of clear¬ 
ness relations. Since each image, the visual and the empathic, is 


A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF FORGETTING 


145 


a simultaneous presentation of details or elements all organized 
into one constellation or into one mass, more or less perfectly 
unified, each affords suitable conditions and each is the fertile 
field for disintegration as forgetting progresses; out of each 
whole image of the immediate recall there will issue separate, 
discrete images, and these will appear in consciousness in suc¬ 
cessive fashion or they will offer a premium to fluctuations and 
vacillations and oscillations of whole, discrete images, in plenty. 
But, of the two kinds of images, namely visual versus empathic, 
the visual image of the earlier recalls is the most accurate and 
the most efficient representative of positions, forms, shapes, sizes, 
directions, and spatial relations; however, in later recalls the em¬ 
pathic image comes into its own and is now more efficient than 
the visual image for positions, forms, shapes, sizes, directions, 
and spatial relations. This fact is understandable in the light of 
the fact that at the outset the empathic image was more highly 
organized and unified than the visual image and therefore suf¬ 
fered less disintegration; and it is to be explained by another fact, 
namely that it seems well established by our data that in the 
course of forgetting visual and other sorts of contents are entirely 
or almost entirely lost and the kinaesthetic modes of representa¬ 
tion then bear the burden of conserving and of recalling the con¬ 
tents and function as vicariates for the missing modalities. 

20. The auditory-vocal-motor image is especially character¬ 
ized by the fact that it is a train of successive details or con¬ 
tents. Its succession of contents affords a very favorable condi¬ 
tion for the total loss or exclusion of entire images or entire 
trains of images. A given auditory-vocal-motor image of the 
immediate recall suffers very little in itself or within its own con¬ 
tents as forgetting advances; that is, very few qualitative 
changes or quantitative alterations are effected in it by forget¬ 
ting; but, of a train or constellation of auditory-vocal-motor 
images, of the immediate recall, a great number of entire images 
may have dropped out in the course of forgetting when much 
time has elapsed since the immediate recall, or the images are 
juxtaposed and transposed, or they may alternate and fluctuate 


146 


HAROLD R. CROSLAND 


in a most confusing manner. A train of auditory-vocal-motor 
images manifests the effects of forgetting in two forms. On the 
one hand, the train or flow of images tends to become more rapid 
and the duration of each content in consciousness tends to become 
more transient,—this form of mechanization being accompanied 
by an ever increasing amount of syncopation and schematizing 
of contents and an increasing degree of looseness and detached¬ 
ness between contents. On the other hand, the auditory-vocal- 
motor images take on significant modes of inflection as forget¬ 
ting becomes more pronounced,—these changes of inflection are 
essentially characteristic of hesitancy, doubtfulness, slowness, 
forcefulness, emphasis, etc. The relative number of auditory- 
vocal-motor images grows larger and larger as forgetting makes 
greater headway and as time elapses. 

21. A kinaesthetic image represents the details of a learning 
material in only a rough and indicative fashion; fine details of 
position, form, size, direction, and spatial relations are not pres¬ 
ent in the image, or if they are present, they are very schematic 
and hazy. But we find that a given kinaesthetic image suffers 
least, of all images, from the effects of forgetting; in fact, a 
given kinaesthetic image shows the effects of forgetting far less 
than even an empathic image. The nature of the slight effects of 
forgetting on kinaesthetic images consists, on one hand, in their 
alternations and fluctuations, their arrangement in erroneous 
combinations or sequences, and, on the other hand, in their be¬ 
coming more general and more roughly representative of the 
material once learned. The relative increase of the number and 
of the importance of kinaesthetic forms of recall-processes, as 
forgetting becomes more evident, and the slight effects of for¬ 
getting on them, are striking phenomena, and they furnish us 
little evidence which can be used to explain the causes of such an 
interesting state of affairs (although Washburn has attempted 
[195] an explanation and Russell has been [162] no less in¬ 
genious in explaining the phenomenon). 


1. 

2 . 

3 - 

4 - 

5 - 
6 . 


7 - 

8 . 

9 - 

10. 

11. 

12 . 
13 - 


14. 

15- 


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